


Kisekigoroshi-hen

by BaiukHikaeli



Category: Higurashi_no_Naku_Koro_Ni, Puella_Magi_Madoka_Magica
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 78,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaiukHikaeli/pseuds/BaiukHikaeli
Summary: It has been a little over a month since Walpurgis Night.Homura Akemi, along with the closest person she has left to a friend, has just left Mitakihara City to investigate a place discussed among Incubators only in rumors.  A place they cannot go, and where past magical girls have ventured only to disappear: a seemingly unassuming village in the highlands of Gifu Prefecture known in these days as Hinamizawa.The members of the Hinamizawa Games Club know nothing about this, of course.  But Rika Furude is quite curious about this new pink-haired goddess that just showed up in town.  Especially since for some reason a certain someone else can't seem to stand her.Perhaps a pebble thrown into the well of fate might not be thrown in vain?But then... it's nearly Watanagashi...
Comments: 19
Kudos: 57





	1. Convergentia Fragminum

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Higurashi and PMMM crossover. You will notice the "chose not to use archive warnings". That would be because doing justice to either show requires a noncommittal shrug on two of them. There may or may not be major character deaths. There may or may not be graphic depictions of violence. You have been warned.
> 
> (On the other hand, note the Gen category. There is no explicit sexual activity here.)
> 
> Additionally, character tags have been restricted to the two viewpoint characters. (I figure if you're reading a Higurashi/PMMM work you're probably familiar with the two inherent spoiler characters, but just in case.)

> _“All right. I’ll play the game with this endless June. As much as you wish.”_
> 
> _“I'll do it over, no matter how many times it takes... I'll relive it over and over again. I will find the way out. The one path that will save you from this destiny of despair.”_

It was another sunny day in Hinamizawa.  


Again.  


Rika had been getting tired of those back when the loops lasted years, and that had been how long ago now? There was a time when Hanyuu had been able to take the two of them back all the way back past the first year, but that had been a long time ago. These days she had two and a half weeks, three tops.  


One of these days Hanyuu wouldn’t be able to take them back at all, and Rika didn’t particularly want to think about what would happen after that.  


Oh well, it couldn’t be helped. There wasn’t even anything Rika could do just yet to try to avert that looming catastrophe, futile or just maybe otherwise. For all the little variations between fragments most of them fit into one of a few categories, and it would be a couple of days yet until the first of them started to rear their heads. At least that gave her a couple of days more to enjoy time with the rest of the Games Club – but that wasn’t exactly helping right now. Mion had been called over to help with the family trade for the day – probably observing the loan sharks, if Rika had to guess, given the timing – and given that everyone else had dispersed. In theory Rika could have done stuff with Satoko, but it sure looked like Satoko was off making her traps again. Of course, Rika sometimes helped make the traps, but Satoko hadn’t invited her and, well, Rika wasn’t terribly interested in hanging upside-down from her ankle just then. Even Hanyuu was off somewhere; Rika hadn’t seen her since school had let out. In theory there was a certain upside to that, but while Rika had long since started ridiculously underaged drinking it still felt uncouth to head for the old bottle while the sun was still up. Which it was, technically. So instead Rika perched herself by the railing next to the Furude Shrine and looked down on the village.  


After a minute, motion caught her eye. _Ah! Hanyuu is back!_ , she thought.  


Although… why was Hanyuu hovering a few meters to her left? That wasn’t like Hanyuu, usually she kept quite close to Rika when not on her rounds around the village.  
Actually, now that Rika took a closer look… was that even Hanyuu? It was hard to tell, from this angle; the goddess was a little further forwards than Rika, and facing away. But the hair color was a little different than Hanyuu’s, and that wasn’t Hanyuu’s usual hakama – the figure was wearing a long white dress instead.  
In fact, now that Rika took a closer look that definitely wasn’t Hanyuu, was it? Rika had gotten so used to ignoring Hanyuu’s horns for Hanyuu’s sake that it had taken her a moment to think about them, but they definitely weren’t there; instead, this other woman had side ponytails. Also, Hanyuu’s breasts would have been visible at this angle (one of these days Rika would actually get old enough to get big breasts of her own) and this newcomer’s weren’t. In fact, if Rika was being honest with herself she wasn’t sure “woman” was the right descriptor here? She wasn’t actually sure this other woman – girl? – was any older than Rena, let alone Mion or Shion.  


_Ah, well,_ Rika thought. In theory one of her parents was probably supposed to handle this sort of thing, but seeing as they were dead and Rika wasn’t it kind of fell on her to offer proper offerings, didn’t it?  


Rika headed over to the other woman.  


“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she asked her once she got to a respectful distance, “but… who are you, honored one? And are there any offerings you would like me to set out?”  


Madoka Kaname turned and stared. 

“Ah, man, I’m getting hungry,” Kyoko complained as the two of them walked through Okinomiya.  


“We’ll have to look for something,” Homura agreed after a moment. “Maybe there’s someplace cheap, or else your talents might come in handy. We didn’t exactly bring that much money with us.”  


Homura’s family was actually reasonably well off, to be fair, but it wasn’t like her surviving parent had ever really cared about her all that much, even after he had been forced to admit that Homura was right and that boarding school he’d once sent her to was literally killing her. She got a nice apartment and a monthly allowance, these days, and if she wanted anything else the answer was probably no. On a good day, at least. On a bad day it would be “hell no” and a rant about how Homura was a dishonor to the Akemi name. She’d used a couple of months of savings and fenced an ill-gotten good in order to make sure the two of them had enough for this little expedition. Most of that had been spent on the two bikes and camping gear currently stored in Homura’s shield – Kyoko had plenty of experience sleeping rough and Homura was more than happy to do the same for a few days rather than pay for a hotel – and the train tickets had eaten a chunk too. There was probably enough yen left to last them a few days without resorting to petty thievery, but the two of them would need to be careful. Besides, if they were going to have to resort to stealing food Homura preferred doing so here rather than their actual destination. Hinamizawa was the home base of the local Yakuza clan, and drawing their attention would make it harder to operate and also harder to loot their stockpile on the way out. Okinomiya was also in their territory, but as an actual small city it was better suited to anonymity.  


“Yeah, yeah. I just don’t feel like solving mysteries on an empty stomach,” Kyoko sighed.  


There was a reason the two of them had come here, Homura reflected. In the last couple of months, apparently the Incubators had detected some sort of strange effect encompassing Hinamizawa and its surroundings. That much had been widely circulated among the Puella Magi community. What had convinced Homura to investigate in spite of her dislike of those little bastards, however, was that the Incubators had dated the start of the effect to right before the first of May.  


Homura was more than a little curious why an effect would have started up here right after Madoka had made her wish, yes.  


She’d managed to get a little more information out of the Incubators before actually making the trip. There had been something strange in the area for years – apparently the Incubators were somehow unable to approach closer than a few kilometers of the village, and had been for at least a century before this new effect showed up. A few Puella Magi had investigated the anomaly over the years; none had returned. Honestly, if the timing didn’t seem to be strongly connected to Madoka that alone would have convinced Homura to stay a long way away; as it was, the two of them were going to have to be very careful indeed. It wasn’t out of the question at all that the problem was a Wraith, or worse; Hinamizawa had been an insular place for a very long time, and the town’s original name of Onigafuchi was… suggestive. But Homura had her doubts. None of what limited evidence she had been able to find meshed well with either of those possibility. Perhaps it would be better of she was wrong, though; if the problem wasn’t a Wraith’s miasma (or something similar, like an old Witch’s barrier), then that meant something new, and the thing about entirely new things was that they were impossible to properly prepare for.  


“Oh, hey, an arcade!” Kyoko yelled happily, jolting Homura out of her thoughts. “We should stop by, maybe they’ll have DDR, I haven’t gotten to play in a week.”  


Homura saw it herself after a moment, on the other side of the street and a couple of blocks down. Hmm. It wasn’t actually a terrible idea, now that Homura thought about it. It wouldn’t help them find food in and of itself, no, and the games frankly weren’t that interesting to her. Which meant Homura wasn’t exactly good at them, either, since she’d never bothered to practice. Well, except when she busted out the time stop in short intervals to cheat – she’d done that to Kyoko twice so far, and the look on her friend’s face had been worth it. Of course, that also meant that Kyoko was absolutely sure that Homura was holding back the rest of the time – which Homura admittedly was, in a sense – and kept wanting to challenge her. Facing such an uncertain situation and with no guarantee of defeating any Wraiths soon, of course, Homura couldn’t afford to spend magic on that today. On the other hand, Kyoko had another reason she liked the arcades – focusing on a game kept her mind off of her stomach, on those days when she had enough money to play but not to buy food. That would give Homura time to look around and see if any of the food places nearby were either affordable or not keeping a good eye on their stock.  


“Actually, that is not a bad idea,” Homura conceded.  


They headed over and in, and looked around at the assorted games.  


“Wait, what is up with this place?” Kyoko sputtered after a moment. “No DDR?”  


It was more than just that, Homura saw. There were far more old-fashioned festival games than Homura was used to from the arcades at Mitakihara, and the video games were… old. Really old. The newest cabinet looked suspiciously like the original Street Fighter; most of them were things like Space Invaders, Asteroids, and even an ancient Pong cabinet.  


“It’s like this place never left the Showa era,” Kyoko muttered.  


“Now that I think about it, the machines aren’t the only old thing about this place, are they?” Homura said quietly.  


“What do you mean?” Kyoko asked,  


“Were you looking at any of the cars we saw outside?” Homura asked her in turn.  


“Yeah, kind of. They were kind of old, weren’t they?” Kyoko conceded.  


“From what I saw, they were all about the same age as these game cabinets,” Homura agreed. “That Kyubey told me that this town was kind of old-fashioned and they thought it was related to the effect, but I thought it was just referring to rural life along with its warnings about cell phone coverage, not... this.”  


“I know, at least they could have…” Kyoko started, then trailed off, looking behind Homura.  


Homura turned and looked behind her. Uh-oh. There was another girl in the arcade, taller than Homura with blond hair shaped into two long drill-tails and a rather fashionable costume.  


Homura knew that look well. Old timelines or no, the last two times she’d met the girl who wore it things had ended on rather unfriendly terms.  


“You know,” Mami Tomoe said, “I knew it sounded like you two, but I didn’t actually believe it until you two mentioned Kyubey. "So,” she continued, pointng a very level stare directly at Homura, “what are you two doing here, anyways?"

It was widely known, in Hinamizawa, that those of House Furude were able to see the kami.  


Exactly how much of that was reality and how much of that was just reputation was honestly a fair question, Rika thought. Her mother, certainly, had never been able to see Hanyuu, and frankly the difference between the village’s usual image of Oyashiro-sama and the rather shy goddess Rika knew as Hanyuu suggested otherwise. But Rika, certainly, had that ability, and had since she had very young.  


Up until two days ago, however, Hanyuu had been the only kami that Rika had seen.  


Now, for the first time in a thousand loops, she had met another.  


The other kami called herself Madoka; Rika might have wondered at her blowing off the more formal address of O-Madoka-sama, if she hadn’t been used to Hanyuu doing the same thing. She seemed young, and almost desperately happy to have someone new to talk to. Formally introducing the visiting goddess to Hanyuu and having her oldest friend receive the newcomer would have helped with that too, on top of being the formal and hospitable thing to do. Unfortunately, Hanyuu had been almost completely absent for the last two days, and the one time she had shown up she’d left before Rika could talk about the issue.  


On the positive side, this Madoka seemed somewhat more blasé about Rika’s occasional bad habit of getting herself drunk with the old family cooking sake late at night. She’d been almost wistful about it, actually.  


When Madoka had suggested heading over to Okinomiya after school today, then, Rika had agreed after only a moment’s thought about the possibility of this backfiring and getting her killed. She’d tried to round up the entire Games Club and make this an official activity, for a given value of official, but once again half of them had been busy – Rena was doing something with her father, and Mion was getting called in on family business again. The latter was unfortunate, honestly, if Rika was remembering someone’s schedule correctly.  


Rika had, after all, recognized the restaurant that Madoka had wanted them to go to.  


She kept pedaling, trailing Keiichi and Satoko, as they reached the crest of the road and started the long downhill towards the larger city.

Somehow, Homura reflected, the situation hadn’t come to blows.  


It was probably Kyoko’s presence that had done it, Homura mused. She and Mami Tomoe weren’t as close as they had once been, but they were still on amicable terms and Miss Tomoe was probably reluctant to get into a fight right in front of Kyoko, especially when it would clash with her preferred elegant image. As it was, Homura and Kyoko had explained why they’d come and promptly gotten a little elegant laugh out of Miss Tomoe; Homura’s first instinct, once the shock had worn off, was that Miss Tomoe was here for the same reason the two of them had been, and it had taken little time to prove her correct.  


Then Miss Tomoe had offered to buy Kyoko lunch, and Kyoko had taken her up on it. It figured. Every time Homura offered, Kyoko turned her down. Actually, no. Now that Homura thought about it, that was exactly why Kyoko kept turning her down, wasn’t it? It reminded her friend of her time with Miss Tomoe, and while Homura and Kyoko were close these days they weren’t close like that.  


Miss Tomoe had taken them to a place called Angel Mort in a different part of town; apparently it was regionally known for its sweets. Homura wondered about the name, honestly; the owner had named it in English to sound exotically foreign, but if Homura was remembering her English classes correctly didn’t the name mean something like “angel of death”? Angel was a lock, that had come up in some Sunday school lesson once back at that accursed school, and Homura kind of remembered “mortal” coming up as something like “able to die” in English class once.  


She also wondered about the uniforms, once they headed inside. This was clearly intended to be a maid cafe of sorts, but something about the outfits the waitresses were wearing struck Homura as weirdly reminiscent of a magical girl costume instead, especially on one waitress Homura could see who had green hair. Hell, Homura’s own costume was less flashy than those waitress outfits were.  


They settled in and looked over the menu; Miss Tomoe went for something that looked dainty and elegant, while Kyoko had predictably gone for what looked like the biggest thing on the menu. Homura herself took a minute to decide, warring between her ambivalence about sweets and her hunger, before her eyes lit on a concoction mixing ice cream and coffee (“Like an American ice cream soda, only with coffee!”, the menu explained) and curiosity got the better of her. They’d also ordered a curry off the savory part of the menu for the three of them to split; the sweets would provide a quick energy boost, but Homura was keenly aware that they wouldn’t stop any of them from being hungry later.  


“So,” Kyoko spoke quietly as their waitress (the green-haired girl, which Homura found vaguely amusing) headed back into the kitchen, “Mami, did you have a plan for how to investigate whatever is going on here?”  
“Head into town, blast any Wraith that shows up,” Miss Tomoe shrugged.  


That was unusually reckless of Miss Tomoe, Homura thought – the other girl was not half bad as a strategist when she set herself to it. Admittedly that wasn’t always, especially when she was also trying to show off for other people, and that had bitten her in more than one timeline. But… Miss Tomoe hadn’t exactly known either of the two of them were coming, had she? Not by the way she’d reacted to them at the arcade, and if she’d come with someone else then why hadn’t Miss Tomoe linked back up with the other person before lunch? No, Mami Tomoe had come here alone, which meant she’d had no-one to show off for. And yet she’d still gone for the reckless approach. That was suggestive.  


“Would I be right in guessing that means you tried to figure out a better idea yourself and wound up drawing a blank?” Homura asked her.  


Miss Tomoe bristled briefly, but she deflated after seeing Kyoko’s look. “Okay, okay, you caught me. I looked up stuff before coming here and checked the local library for anything useful but got nothing. Can you believe the library still doesn’t have any computers? Either way, the problem is that there’s basically only three or four ways into Hinamizawa because of the mountain passes.”  


“I am unsure whether I should be relieved or worried a better strategist than I could not think of anything either,” Homura admitted. “I had wondered about just trying to skirt the outside of the area by following some of the local roads.”  


“That would have been a better plan if I’d thought to bring a bicycle,” Miss Tomoe said ruefully. “But I am unsure it would have worked anyways. I did have a thought like that, so I made sure to take a bus here that would take one of those outlying roads. No luck.” She sighed. “I suppose it makes sense. If there were Wraiths that far out, those roads wouldn’t have regular bus routes.”  


Homura had to admire Miss Tomoe’s faith in the bureaucracy, naive as it was.  


Miss Tomoe started to speak up again after a moment, but noticed something and fell silent. Lo and behold, it was the waitress returning with their order. Homura took her coffee soda and started to see just what it tasted like, but was distracted by their waitress failing to conceal a start. Huh. The green-haired girl wasn’t looking at them, so what had caught her attention? Unfortunately it would have been impolite to look.  


Homura’s curiosity was answered irregardless a minute later, as the waitress returned to the next table down with three customers in tow. Fair enough; perhaps they were regulars. It made sense, given their ages, especially if the boy was being a protective senior; he was clearly older than the other two. He was quite probably older than Homura herself, at least physically; he looked like the boys the next grade up, or maybe a grade or two past that. His clothes also stood out; the red tank top and long cargo shorts somehow looked even scruffier than Kyoko’s, uh, well-worn hoodie and shorts, despite being in better condition. The two girls with the boy, meanwhile, looked young enough that Homura wasn’t sure they were in middle school yet. The pink shirt and jeans shorts one was wearing were overshadowed by her appearance – her hair was blond verging on white and her eyes were visibly reddish. Something about the combination seemed unpleasantly familiar, though Homura couldn’t immediately place where she’d seen it before. The other girl was much less striking and frankly looked something like Homura might have a couple of years before contracting if she’d had the good sense to get rid of those twin braids before she could. Ugh. Homura still couldn’t believe she’d ever thought that hairstyle were a good idea. Admittedly Homura wasn’t sure she could pull off the princess-cut yamato nadeshiko look the way this girl did. At any rate, those three were vaguely interesting but not Homura’s problem; she took a bite of her order.  


Or rather, Homura started to until the second of the two girls turned and started to stare directly at her.

It was impolite to stare, Rika knew, but for a moment she just couldn’t help it.  


“What’s wrong, Rika?” Satoko asked beside her.  


“I’m not sure anything’s wrong, actually, sir,” Rika thought out loud. “It’s just… something caught my eye, that’s all.”  


It wasn’t anything about any of the three girls she was looking at, per se. Yes, the blond one was wearing the kind of curled drill pigtails that spoke to either an upper-class upbringing, an unusual amount of work each morning, or more likely both, but that hadn’t been what had caught Rika’s eye, and frankly the other two basically looked like ordinary schoolgirls.  


The way that O-Madoka had draped her arms around the black-haired girl and was hugging her protectively? _That_ got Rika’s attention.  


“Have we met?” the girl seated next to the girl Madoka was draped around asked them, apparently blind to any subtext.  


“Not that I know of, no,” Keiichi responded from next to her. “Of course, I’m still pretty new around here – Rika, Satoko, do either of you know these three?”  


“Negative.”  


“No, sir.”  


“Well, I suppose we can fix that,” Keiichi decided. “I’m Maebara. Keiichi Maebara.”  


“Satoko Hojo.”  


“Rika Furude.”  


The blond girl’s eyes narrowed slightly at Rika’s own introduction, interestingly. Rika was frankly lucky to have caught it, she’d only noticed because she’d been looking that way for a second, but it was there nonetheless.  


“I’m Mami Tomoe,” the blond-haired girl introduced herself a moment later.  


“Homura Akemi,” said the black-haired girl who Madoka still hadn’t stopped hugging, “and this is Kyoko Sakura.”  


“Dude!” waved the red-haired girl who was apparently Kyoko Sakura a moment later, after she finished taking a large bite out of her dessert.  


“Do you three want to share our company for a meal?” Mami asked, to Rika’s considerable surprise. It wasn’t exactly the polite thing to do, after all, and this Mami struck Rika as more likely to care about politeness than most.  


“Well, when three pretty girls ask me to keep them company, I suppose I can’t really say no, can I?” Keiichi grinned, wearing the same smile he always got right before he earned his way into a club punishment game. “Rika, Satoko, do you mind?”  


“Perhaps it would be for the best,” Rika said thoughtfully, mindful of the seventh person at the table.  


"Well, if you two are for it I don’t see why not,” Satoko concluded.  


“There’s no establishment rule against that, is there?” Rika asked Shion.  


She wasn’t actually going to call Shion by her name, no sir, not today. Nothing against Shion, but Keiichi didn’t know that Mion had a twin sister yet and Rika wasn’t going to pass up that source of entertainment, especially not considering that Keiichi was terrible at keeping his thoughts off his face. His confusion had already been evident from the moment Shion had shown up to lead them to a table. Admittedly, it could blow up in the worst way, but that wasn’t new in more ways than one. There was a reason Rika sometimes described herself as killing time until the end of the world, after all.  


“No,” Shion denied.  


“Then it’s decided,” Miss Tomoe stated decisively. “Here, let me switch sides. Better to keep a young man on the other side of the table from the older ladies, just so he is not Tempted, yes?’  


There was a little more reshuffling than that; the other two girls over there – Homura and Kyoko, yes? – switched their seats as well. By the looks of things, Rika suspected that Homura and Mami were not on the best of terms.  


Rika herself claimed the seat closest to the window on what was now their side, with Satoko on her left where Miss Tomoe had been and then Keiichi closest to the aisle. They ordered, and while Shion took the order back to the kitchen Rika took the chance to take a closer look at their new acquaintances. Miss Sakura had red hair similar to Rena’s but darker; under the present lighting she almost looked like she had streaming flames instead of a ponytail. Her clothes were also weird. They were quite shabby – they reminded Rika of the types of clothes the three Great Families collected for charity periodically – but they were also just weird, what with that hooded sweatshirt thing Miss Sakura was wearing. Admittedly it looked Western and Western fashion took a few years to get this far out, but still. It also had to be quite hot in full summer weather. Miss Akemi, meanwhile, looked… well, to be honest, not that different from Rika herself, except for the red ribbon she was wearing as a headband. And the clothes. It was like Miss Akemi had gone for looking as indescript as possible. Miss Tomoe, on the other hand, stood out in more ways than just her hair; she was dressed up almost like some of the women the club sometimes saw out on the town in Okinomiya, though exactly what fashion the other girl was going for Rika couldn’t tell. Something new out of Tokyo, no doubt. She would ask Rena about it later; her father was a fashion designer, he would know even if Rena didn’t. The other thing that stood out about Miss Tomoe was that she was the only one of the other girls with much of a chest, like the Sonozaki twins had and Hanyuu had and like Rika was going to have if she ever managed to live past her twelfth birthday. (Or so Rika hoped. She was really tired of being treated like a kid, after all.)  


At the moment, Miss Tomoe was also scribbling something on a napkin. After a moment she finished and pushed it over the table.  


“When you called yourself Rika Furude,” the older girl asked, “by any chance did you mean Furude like this?”  


Rika looked at the napkin. Sure enough, there was her family name, written just as it should be.  


“Yes, sir,” Rika confirmed. “How did you know?”  


“Actually, that is a good question, Mami Tomoe,” Homura spoke up from the other side of the table. “How did you know that?”  


“Wait, are you telling me you two didn’t think to look that up?” Miss Tomoe retorted, turning to face the other two girls on the other side of the table. “Okay, I’ll admit I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of you didn’t think of that piece of research, but I’d have expected one of you two to think of it. Probably you, Miss Akemi, you always tended to be well-prepared.”  


“I checked the local geography and the news reports,” Miss Akemi responded. “I am not sure why I would have run into a reference to a Furude family.”  


“Didn’t think to check the society pages?” Miss Tomoe said, with the slightest trace of a smirk. “When I was checking the area it mentioned that Hinamizawa was effectively run by three prominent local families – the Kimiyoshi, the Sonozaki, and the Furude. The Great Families, as they’re apparently called in local parlance.”  


“This is true, sir, though there’s admittedly not much of my family left these days,” Rika admitted.  


“Not much” was an understatement, really. To the best of Rika’s knowledge all of the branch family had died in the war, and Rika’s parents had died from a terminal case of not listening a couple of years back… well, “couple of years” as the era passed, anyways. _Really, Mom,_ Rika thought, _you were tangentially involved with a research program you’d come to believe was shady and you didn’t expect them to kill you if you got in the way?_ But they were dead now, and as an only child that meant that Rika was to the best of her knowledge the last surviving member of her family anywhere. Well, unless you counted Hanyuu.  


“So… Miss Tomoe, I think you said your name was?” Keiichi said from beside her. “I’m curious now – why were you looking up the area anyways?”  


“I’d heard the area was quite pretty at this time of year and we had a couple of weeks off school for reasons so we all came here to take a look for ourselves,” Miss Tomoe answered.  


“Yeah, and more importantly there’s supposed to be these strange occurrences in the area and we wanted to check them out,” Miss Sakura blurted out beside her. “We honestly weren’t entirely sure it was safe, but if you’re from Hinamizawa itself it can’t be too dangerous, eh?”  


“I’m not sure I would quite use the word safe about Hinamizawa this time of year, sir,” Rika muttered darkly in spite of herself.  


Nobody else caught it, though, for good or ill.  


“Hinamizawa is a nice place, you should be able to stay for a couple of weeks if you need to,” Satoko said brightly.  


“Well, if you can find a place to stay,” Keiichi laughed. “My family weighed visiting overnight when Mom and Dad were considering moving here, we wound up renting a room here in Okinomiya overnight for that reason.”  


“Oh, we’re good there,” Miss Sakura laughed. “I’m used to camping anyways, and we weren’t sure we wouldn’t need to hike the mountains for a day anyways. Homura here brought gear for us two; I’m guessing Mami did the same.”  


_They thought they might need to hike the mountains? Okay, that’s kind of confusing,_ Rika thought.  


“I did, though I’ll admit I was hoping not to have to resort to that,” Miss Tomoe confirmed.  


“It is probably for the best that you didn’t try to take the mountains by foot,” Satoko laughed. “The workers who run the forest preserve do not seem to care as long as you respect the trees and avoid cutting them down, but I hear that people who walk through unwarily sometimes fall victim to… traps.”  


Satoko was bragging, of course, but Rika frankly wasn’t about to spoil her friend’s fun.  


“We should probably run this by Mion and have her check with her family just in case, sirs,” Rika pointed out. Admittedly it made sense that she had to be the voice of reason here – Keiichi was still a newcomer, and while Satoko was technically older than Rika that didn’t take into account the better part of a century of relived experience. Rena would probably have caught the issue, but she wasn’t here.  


“Hmm,” Satoko thought out loud. “That is a good point, actually.”  


“Mion?” Miss Tomoe asked from the other side of the table.  


“Mion Sonozaki,” Rika explained.  


“From the third Great Family?” Miss Tomoe prompted, catching on.  


“Heir to the family,” Rika confirmed. “She goes to school with us.”  


“I see,” Miss Tomoe nodded. “My research pointed out the Great Families and their names, but not their current members.”  


“Well, it’s not exactly like it’s going to be hard to talk to Mion and get her to make sure it’s okay for our visitors to stay,” Keiichi grinned. “When Mion said she was helping with one of the family businesses today, I didn’t expect her to mean she was working as a waitress here.”  


_Heh,_ Rika thought amusedly, _there it is._ Though admittedly keeping her friend in the dark had sounded like a better idea before three newcomers had mentioned they wanted to visit Hinamizawa for a while. Should she bother to speak up now?  


“Ah, Mion,” Keiichi said as events made any of Rika’s thoughts moot. “Apparently these three girls sitting with us are looking at visiting Hinamizawa for a few days.”  


“Can you contact a certain family member and tell her that we have some guests who would like to stay in Hinamizawa for a few days, sir?” Rika asked Shion, smiling innocently – Shion was smart, she’d know what Rika was really asking. “Nipaahh~,” she added smilingly, part puppy-eye manipulation and part injoke. Also part cover story for Shion, at that.  


“I think that can be arranged,” Shion replied, winking quietly at Rika as she took their orders.  


The table was quiet for a bit after that, probably because everyone on the other side of the table was busy eating. Miss Sakura stood out – it sure looked to Rika like she was trying to eat like a lady but wasn’t really used to it. She was also eyeing their side of the table… and now that Rika thought about it, it was pretty obvious what was going on, wasn’t it? Kyoko seemed to have the same look on her face that Mion and Rena got around Keiichi. Hopefully that wouldn’t turn out to be a mess. Miss Tomoe was also eating more formally, but to her it came much more naturally; the way Miss Akemi was eating, somehow, felt ridiculously controlled. It was like how Satoko ate when she didn’t trust everyone she was sitting around, which admittedly wasn’t all that often these days. Of course, today she was going to be eating with three visitors…  


Their own orders arrived shortly – around the same time that Miss Sakura spilled something, leading to a farcical sight as she tried to politely eat the food off the table – and they started to eat as well. Lo and behold, Satoko was eating almost like Homura across the table; unless Rika was very much mistaken, Homura had caught that as well. The other side of the table also all noticed Keiichi’s eating habits, or perhaps more accurately couldn’t help but notice; the newest member of the Games Club had a very teenage boy sense of table etiquette.  


Eventually they all finished up and started to pay the checks. Except something seemed to have Miss Sakura’s hackles up…  


“Oi! My good sir,” she said, eyes pointed firmly at Keiichi. “Are you really going to just leave all that perfectly good curry on the table? You shouldn’t waste food, you know!”  


Sure enough, there were a few bits of rice and vegetable left in the bottom of Keiichi’s bowl.  


“Eh. I figured I could eat all of it when I ordered, but apparently not?” Keiichi shrugged. “It means I spent a little more money than I needed to, but I’ve been careful with my allowance this week.”  


Miss Sakura visibly twitched at that.  


“I mean, if it bothers you, you could always just finish it yourself!” Keiichi teased Miss Sakura. “Wouldn’t be an indirect kiss at all…”  


Miss Sakura tried and utterly failed to suppress a blush at that, though Rika wouldn’t have been able to peg it the second source of embarrassment if she hadn’t been watching the other girl earlier. Really, she shouldn’t have been able to catch onto these things at all, not at her physical age. Whoever kept killing Rika had much to answer for. Well, okay, that and Hanyuu actually answering her questions, but really now. Meanwhile, Miss Sakura positively froze for a few seconds. That was surprising to Rika, actually – Rika would have expected the other girl to just leave the food be rather than succumb to the implication of an indirect kiss. There was something more to that dislike of wasting food, wasn’t there? Rika’s impression was reinforced by how Miss Sakura finally resolved the probable cognitive dissonance – she poured some water from her glass into Keiichi’s unfinished bowl, washed the remains of the curry with it, and promptly wolfed down the remaining curry bits – sacrificing the sauce, no less.  


“Uhh…” Keiichi trailed off beside Rika, shoe firmly on the other shoe now.  


Oh, Keiichi was in for it now. Satoko wouldn’t let up on him for a week. As for Rika herself, she suppressed the urge to grin at a fellow Games Club member losing. No, this called for something better, and making it too obvious would mean the game was up for the foreseeable future. Instead Rika reached up and gently patted Keiichi on the head – well, as best she was able, anyways. Which was better than she might have, since Keiichi had slumped in his seat a bit at Kyoko calling his bet. On the other side of the table, Miss Tomoe had this wickedly polite smile on her face. Miss Akemi, meanwhile, was either completely unimpressed or very good at keeping a deadpan impression. She swiftly flagged Shion down for the two checks, which the six of them promptly paid.  


“I wonder,” Miss Tomoe said as Shion started to walk away. “How long will it take before the Great Families give their approval for our visit?”  


“Probably tomorrow, sir,” Rika answered.  


“I thought that might be the case,” Miss Tomoe nodded. “Where, then, should we stay for the night if we want to be polite?”  


Rika thought about it for a moment. “I think you could probably stay on my family’s property for the night, sir? It's not like my parents are going to bother us. If you are not welcomed, I can apologize to Mrs. Sonozaki for my presumption.”  


“I think that will work for us, yes,” Homura spoke up.  


“Right, it’s decided,” Keiichi said decisively beside Rika, clapping his hands impolitely as he stood up and started heading for the door.  


Well, when he put it like that… the rest of them followed suit and headed out the door for where the Games Club had stored their bikes. Rika couldn’t help but swing her umbrella on the way over; sometimes her body needed to show its age, sadly.  


“You brought an umbrella?” Keiichi asked her.  


“It seemed like a good idea, sir,” Rika smiled sweetly. A lie, that. Most of the time Rika liked summer weather because unlike everything else the thunderstorms were unpredictable, but today was June 4, and Rika had seen the clouds before heading over. As it was, by her assessment there was at least even odds a thunderstorm would sweep in in a few minutes.  


“That’s Rika-chama for you,” Satoko laughed – she’d noticed Rika grabbing an umbrella when they’d left the house and promptly grabbed one herself. “She’s known as the village weatherman for a reason, you know.”  


“Perhaps we should make haste to Hinamizawa, then,” Miss Akemi stated, a bicycle in hand. Which was interesting, actually – Rika hadn’t seen her untying it. Where had she been keeping it?  


“Wait, you two brought bicycles?” Miss Tomoe asked the other two newcomers.  


“Yeah?” Miss Sakura said. “Homura had the idea and managed to find these two.”  


“Now that I think about it, it would probably have been a good idea, wouldn’t it?” Miss Tomoe sighed. “I suppose I can’t tease you now about not researching the Great Families. 

As it is… would you three happen to know a bicycle shop nearby?”  


Rika did, fortunately – actually slightly cheaper than some of the other local places, actually, since it was a money-laundering front for the Sonozakis. The bikes weren’t great, admittedly, but they would do, and Mami apparently could afford it. From there it was just a matter of whether they could get across the mountain before the rain hit. Rika had her doubts, but frankly it was worth the attempt.  


The answer, as it turned out, was in fact no, though luckily it was mostly rain and not lightning. It was still too heavy to keep going for long. Luckily, they found a place to pull over before the road got too slick for the bikes, where they promptly huddled under the three umbrellas they’d collectively brought. There was some consternation at who would have to pair with who, and not just from the question of who Keiichi would be paired with; eventually, Kyoko paired up with Mami, Keiichi held up Satoko’s umbrella, and the girl who looked so much like Rika did the same for her.  


Rika eyed Miss Akemi as they stood and waited for the worst of the rain to pass.  


Had Miss Akemi always been wearing those clothes today?

There was no denying it now, Homura thought.  


Something was wrong about Hinamizawa.  


It wasn’t the people, at least as far as Homura could tell. Admittedly sometimes you couldn’t tell, but Mr. Maebara had seemed fine, and Miss Furude and Miss Hojo – the latter of whom apparently lived with Miss Furude – had invited the two, er, three of them over and made dinner for them. Miss Furude even offered to let Homura, Kyoko, and Miss Tomoe stay at her place overnight while everyone sorted through the formalities of informing the other Great Families about new visitors.  


No, the issues were more subtle than that.  


Like Homura’s clothes.  


She’d arrived in Okinomiya in a casual outfit, having concluded that her school uniform might draw too much attention when she was planning on arriving with Kyoko on Saturday morning. It was something reasonably bland, unlikely to stand out and draw attention. She hadn’t changed clothes since. And yet… well, when she looked down she was wearing something completely different. Not quite her Puella Magi outfit, but something that could only be described as a slightly simpler version of it, with the white-patterned blouse, the black skirt, and the argyle leggings. Naturally, once she’d gotten a chance to haul it out she’d checked her luggage; Homura had found that the other two casual outfits she’d brought had changed to another copy of the same. Weirdly, the school uniforms she’d brought were unaffected. Since she’d been using her shield for storage, she’d also helped Kyoko by storing her sparse possessions for her for the time being, and those were weirder: the Mitakihara school uniforms she’d gifted Kyoko were also untouched, just like the hoodie and shorts Kyoko was wearing, but now there were also three dresses there similarly reminiscent of Kyoko’s transformation. Homura couldn’t just check for Miss Tomoe the same way, but she didn’t need to; after all, the clothes Miss Tomoe was wearing had morphed just like Homura’s had, including a corset that rather stood out relative to the villagers’ clothes.  


Regrettably, Homura had not been the one with the bright idea of trying a proper transformation just to make sure it still worked. That had been Miss Tomoe, who quickly realized that most if not all of her abilities simply weren’t functioning. Likewise for Kyoko, which frankly made it rather strange that Homura could still access her shield at all.  


Somehow it did not strike Homura as coincidental that they’d run across a foursome of yellow gymnastics ribbons on the way over to Miss Furude’s residence.  


They’d perched around the TV after dinner at the house where Miss Furude and Miss Hojo lived, watching some variety show that was apparently Miss Houjou’s favorite. Homura found it… inoffensive. On the one hand, it was a variety show and those were reliably boring. On the other hand, it wasn’t one of the handful of programs that Homura had seen far too many times over the last… few years wasn’t really the right term but Homura couldn’t think of anything better. The only thing worth noting about the TV show, really, was how old it looked. Not necessarily because of its apparent oldness in and of itself, in Homura’s opinion. It looked like something out of the end of the Showa era (the 1980s, by the Western reckoning she saw sometime online), but then so did everything else around here, including the TV set itself and the honest-to-goodness landline phone. It was technically noteworthy, but it wasn’t new. There was a nostalgia to the program, though, that Homura would not have expected. It reminded her of the shows her father had put on when she was very young, back before he’d shipped her off to Catholic school. Still, basking in that fleeting feeling wasn’t enough to actually make the program fun to watch. Honestly, Homura wasn’t entirely sure that Miss Hojo wasn’t the only person here who actually enjoyed the program. Kyoko had been visibly bored even before excusing herself to head outside for a minute, and while Miss Tomoe’s upbringing meant she was far too well trained to let it show Homura suspected she was feeling the same way. Even Miss Furude was barely watching the screen, to Homura’s vague interest – interest fueled by how Homura had seen Miss Furude sneaking looks at her a few times.  


As Homura watched, the show wrapped up and cut to the ending credits, and Rika promptly got up and turned the TV off.  


“Aww, Rika, it’s only ten!” Miss Houjou whined. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, can’t we stay up another hour.”  


Miss Furude just turned and stared at Miss Hojo, her expression reminiscent of a schoolteacher’s disapproval.  


“I know, I know, we need to keep up good habits,” Miss Houjou sighed after a moment.  


Rika’s stern expression softened, and the two girls broke into laughter a moment later. Not a concession, Homura noted silently as the TV remained firmly untouched. An injoke, then?  


“Let’s get out the spare futons for our guests,” Miss Furude said, getting up briskly and heading for what was probably a closet.  


“That will not be necessary,” Homura spoke up, drawing an elegantly raised eyebrow from Miss Tomoe. “Well, at least not for Miss Sakura and I,” she added a moment later, “Mami Tomoe here can speak for herself. But the two of us were expecting to need to stay outdoors, so we brought camping gear with us. It is a bit wet to stay outside, I suppose, but sleeping bags work perfectly fine indoors too.”  


Miss Furude just nodded, after a moment. “There should be room around the edge of this room, or if you want there’s the concrete porch outside.”  


“I will go see where Miss Sakura headed off to,” Homura said, bowing slightly and turning for the door. There was more than one reason to go check, really; Homura wasn’t sure she could get to sleep yet, and heading around the woods for a moment might help with that.  
Homura stepped out the front door and looked around. Hmm. That was the most likely Kyoko spot, right there, but no Kyoko. Not there, either. Where was—?  


And that was when Homura heard it, a familiar voice on the wind.  


“Help!”  


Homura considered heading over directly, then thought better of it. Reinforcements were always useful.  


“Something seems to have happened to Miss Sakura,” she said as she headed back inside. “Can I get some backup here?”  


“Ah, yer Miss Sakura probably fell for one of the traps, didn’t she?” Miss Hojo chuckled as she got to her feet.  


“Traps?” Homura asked.  


“I warned ya about them earlier, didn’t I?” Miss Hojo explained as everyone in the house promptly headed out the door. “Woods are infested with ‘em.”  


She seemed entirely too happy about that, somehow.  


“Right, that sounds like she’s in the trees over that way,” Miss Houjou said, pointing to a spot somewhere ahead and to the left.  


They followed Miss Hojo for a minute until they arrived at a small clearing, wherein Kyoko was suspended in midair, wrapped up in a bamboo rug that had been attached by ropes to a tree limb.  


“Help! Ah, hey, there you guys are,” Kyoko said, wriggling. “I’ve been calling for you for twenty minutes! Mind helping me down?”  


Miss Hojo, Homura saw, had the most enthusiastically gleeful smile on her face. “I’ve dealt with these before, let me help ya,” she said. “Everyone else, stay where you are. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another one of those around here.”  
It took a couple of minutes and the careful help of both Homura and Miss Tomoe to get Kyoko back safely on the ground, but Miss Hojo managed.  


“See?” she said when she was finished. “You three said you were originally thinking about walking the mountains here? Lucky you ran into us so we could warn ya, eh?”  


“I suppose you have a point—” Miss Tomoe started to say, but Miss Hojo interrupted her.  


“STOP RIGHT THERE! Don’t move back! I recognize that spot now!”  


Miss Tomoe heeded her, stepping forward and only then turning back to look. It didn’t look off, to Homura’s eyes, except for a few more leaves than were to be found on other parts of the path. Hmm. Then again, that was more leaves than someone would expect to see during the summer, wasn’t it?  


“Follow me back, everyone,” Miss Hojo smiled, turning to head back to the small house.  


It took a little while for everyone to get ready for bed, after that, since everyone was coming down from an adrenaline high. Well, almost everyone. Miss Hojo had gotten less worked up than everyone else, and once the two girls who actually lived in the house got out their futon she was out like a log in a couple of minutes. Which was usually Kyoko’s forte, though a few years on the streets had taught Homura’s friend not to sleep too deeply, but tonight she’d needed to pace a few minutes right in front of the house before finally coming inside and managing to get to fitful sleep. She’d also abandoned her original plan to sleep outside, not quite trusting the surroundings, and instead perched herself in an out-of-the-way part of the house. Miss Tomoe? She’d made a cup of tea to soothe her nerves, albeit by the other girl’s admission not a very strong one, and then stayed up for twenty minutes before finally laying down in her sleeping bag and drifting off.  


And Homura? She’d been laying in her sleeping bag for an hour, to no use.  


It wasn’t just that trap that was worrying Homura – although the fact that there were traps so close to these girls’ house and it didn’t seem to bother them was odd. Still, it was nothing compared to how the three of them had somehow had their outfits changed and yet couldn’t transform. Or just how old everything seemed to be around here. Or just the look of the place in general. Miss Furude was supposedly the heir of one of this village’s leading families; why was she living in a place like this? Were her parents like Homura’s, the kind to ignore their daughter and ship her off where they wouldn’t bother her? But if so then why was she still here, as opposed to shipped off someplace like that execrable place Homura had been sent to for a few years?  


And, now that Homura looked around the room, another question came to mind. Why was there what looked kind of like a traffic sign in the corner of the room, weirdly reminiscent of Kyoko’s spear? And why hadn’t any of them noticed it earlier?  


Homura concluded this was too interesting to just ignore, and got up to take a look at it.  


She was, she noticed shortly, not the only person who had just gotten up.  


“Mii~” Miss Furude murmured as the girl noticed Homura looking at her. “You are up too, sir? If you’re having trouble finding the bathroom in the dark, the stairs to the second floor are over to the left.”  


“No, not that,” Homura whispered – though part of her whispered that she might need to make a detour there now, now that Miss Furude mentioned it. “I was looking at that pole thing over in the corner. I do not remember seeing it there before?”  


Miss Furude turned to look at where Homura was gesturing towards. “Huh, I… guess that was always there, sir? I don’t remember Satoko bringing it home with her, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the furniture when I moved in here. How strange, how strange.”  


Moved in here, huh? Well, that might explain one thing that had been on Homura’s brain.  


“When you say you ‘moved in here’, I take it you mean that you did not always live in this house?” Homura asked softly, careful not to wake anyone else. “I suppose I had wondered about something like that. Miss Tomoe said you were a member of one of the most prominent local families, but this house seems small for such a family to be living in.”  


“Ah, well, th-that’s a little private…” Miss Furude stammered – and then as Homura watched her face seemed to get more serious, far too mature for her age. “But if you’re going to be around here at this time of year, I suppose you need to know, don’t you sir?” she continued in a sad whisper. “I used to live with my parents up in my family’s main house up the hill, but then they died a while back, sir. Actually, it was actually exactly two years ago in a couple of weeks, they died on the night of Watanagashi – that’s the big local summer festival. This house is better sized for me, so I’ve been living here ever since – I was alone, at first, but then Satoko moved in after last year so that’s nice.”  


Well, that explained the mature expression. Homura could sympathize far too well, though she kept it off her face – she had far more experience than she wanted with losing people she was close to, these days.  


“I suppose I should say I am sorry for your loss,” Homura said softly, her mask ever so slightly broken, “but between you and me somehow I always felt those words were hollow compared to the kinds of tragedy that elicit them.”  


All Miss Furude had to say to that was a soft “Mii~”.  


“Although,” Homura continued as her brain caught up to one niggling point, “I am curious. Why did you say I will need to know this? It is an awfully private thing to bring up, and I imagine you would not do so without need, but I cannot see why it is needed.”  


“Because,” Miss Furude said after a moment, “you said that you were coming here to investigate things, sir, and my parents were not the only people to die on the night of Watanagashi these last few years. There were a couple of workers on the dam, and then Satoko’s parents, and then mine, and then Satoko’s aunt dying and Satoshi transferring. Better you hear it from me now, sir, than find out on your own later, I think.”  


“I see…” Homura trailed off quietly. “Thank you. Now… I believe you were mentioning the stairs to the left heading up to the bathroom? It sounds like a better idea the longer I keep standing.”  


It was politeness, not strictly need, and thus Homura did not need Miss Furude’s parting gesture to find those stairs. While she was in the bathroom she took out her shield and used it to stop time, just to check. It, at least, still seemed to be working, though moving through the time stop was ever so slightly sluggish compared to what Homura was used to. Still, working sluggishly was still working.  


When Homura headed back downstairs, Miss Furude had gotten back into her futon. More comfortingly, if also more annoyingly, Kyoko had started to snore. Typical. Homura got back into her sleeping bag and once more tried to drift off to sleep.  


Before Homura could actually do so, she heard soft footsteps once more. Opening her eyes just a crack, she noticed Miss Furude head over into the kitchen and get a bottle out of one of the lower cupboards. From her angle she could barely see what kind of bottle it was – some kind of cooking wine, by the looks of it.  
As Homura watched, Miss Furude carefully got several ice cubes out of the freezer, placed them into a glass without making a noise, then quietly poured a little of the wine over them and diluted it with mineral water. Then she placed the bottle back where it belonged, silently padded over to the window, and started to drink under the moonless night.  


On the one hand, Homura couldn’t really approve – not just because Miss Furude was too young, but also because Homura had very carefully stayed away from alcohol because she suspected that if she started to drink she would never stop. On the other hand… given what the other girl had just told her, while Homura didn’t approve she could understand. Oh, could she ever understand.  


At least the other girl had only had to live through her loved ones dying once.  


Homura finally started to nod off to sleep after a while, eyes finally closing as she drifted into troubled dreams.

It had been the better part of a day since Rika had bared more private than she would ever have ordinarily talked about to someone who was still nearly a complete stranger, and she was still unsure of the decision.  


She hadn’t meant to, not at first, no. But this Miss Akemi had started talking about things, never noticing the friendly goddess perched behind her, and the goddess had looked up at her words and stared at Rika pleadingly. And after a moment Rika had found the words spilling out. Maybe in the end she had just needed someone who she could unburden herself to, at least for a little while. Her friends all knew the ugly story – well, except maybe one, had Keiichi learned this time around? – and talking about it would just make everyone sad for no good reason.  


Rika perched herself on the windowsill of her house, glanced at the stashed wine bottle in the cupboard, then decided against it. She’d gone for it three days in a row, after all, best not to overdo it. Besides, the sun was still up.  


It would have been easier today, Rika had to admit. Satoko had headed off with a couple of the other kids their age after meeting them at the market, and their guests last night had moved on. Godmother Sonozaki - as Mion's grandmother always insisted Rika call her - had consented to their stay; from what Rika had heard they had set up a camp in one of the old abandoned houses on the south side of the village. Heh. It had been a while, but Rika seemed to recall that one of those had been where the minister’s grandson had been found all those years ago. Would they wind up in the same place? Moreover, from what Rika had gathered those three were also going to be temporarily transferring to the school, so she’d be seeing them soon enough for sure. Possibly quite a bit, since three of five members of the Games Club had already agreed to offer them honorary club membership while they were here; that just left Keiichi and Rena, plus the three new girls agreeing.  
But no, there had been one main reason Rika had taken advantage of last night and the night before and apparently it hadn’t changed: Hanyuu still wasn’t around. Rika was starting to get worried about that, she had to admit. It wasn’t like Hanyuu to spend the better part of four days away from Rika.  
Rika turned back to the window and gazed out on the sunset. It was a pretty sunset, prettier than usual. The only thing distracting from it was the soft noise she was hearing from behind the house.  


After a moment, it occurred to Rika that she recognized that noise. She didn’t have to worry about where Hanyuu was anymore.  


Instead she had a new question. Namely: why was Hanyuu crying this time?  


Rika padded around to the back, eyeing the surroundings carefully. There she was, her oldest friend – and, to be honest, surrogate mother as well, especially these days – sobbing behind the corner of the house.  


Rika waved uncertainly and headed over to put a comforting arm around Hanyuu – or at least as close as you could get when dealing with someone without a physical body. Hanyuu “pushed” her away, though – apparently Hanyuu wanted to be on her own for a moment. So Rika sat down in the dirt and waited.  


After a little while Hanyuu stopped crying for a moment, as if starting to speak, and then started again. Something was apparently too much for her.  


“Can you tell me why you’re crying?” Rika prompted her after a moment, hoping that would be enough to let Hanyuu master her voice and speak.  


“It’s— it’s those girls…” Hanyuu said slowly after a moment, between sobs. “I… I… I can’t really describe it… it’s them… and the other one with them… and it’s all going wrong…”  


One part of the blubbering in particular caught Rika’s attention. “The other one with them… you mean Madoka?” she asked, curiously.  


Hanyuu flinched at the mere mention of the name. _Hmm. Perhaps asking Hanyuu to formally receive Madoka is not the best of ideas right now,_ Rika thought, and knew as soon as she had that it was an understatement.  
But why, then, would Hanyuu be afraid of three teenage girls and one polite visiting goddess?  


Perhaps Rika had accidentally mumbled that thought out loud, because immediately afterwards Hanyuu turned to look at her.  


And suddenly, for a brief moment, Rika had the impression that it was not Hanyuu looking at her at all.  


It was like she was looking at something else entirely. Something that was similar in shape but weird and angular.  


“There may come a time where you must remember, if you are unlucky,” said the thing sadly, tears somehow streaming from the jaggedness where its face should have been, “but not today.”  


Then it was gone, and Rika was once again looking at Hanyuu’s familiar form.  


She backed off after that, and indulged in the dash of wine after all before turning on the TV.  


After a little while, Rika headed over to where they kept Satoko’s medicine syringes and claimed one for herself. Just in case.  


Hopefully it was an unnecessary precaution, but false alarm or no that had not been a good sign. That had not been a good sign at all.  


It had been quite a few rolls of the dice since Rika had last succumbed to the Syndrome, and she intended to keep it that way.


	2. Sororitas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The magical girls of Mitakihara and Kazamino City have transferred into Hinamizawa Branch School for the duration of their stay. The students at the Branch School being who they are and Watanagashi still over a week away, that can mean only one thing...

Homura was the second of the three girls in the old house to wake up the next morning. 

The house they had claimed had been abandoned years ago – from what the three of them had been told, the development had been abandoned after the quarry south of town had closed down – but in spite of that it was in shockingly good repair. There had been a thick coat of dust on everything, true, but the three of them had handled that easily enough. Or, more accurately, Miss Tomoe had with a little help from the other two. It couldn’t have been helped. Kyoko had lived on the streets for over a year. Homura herself, meanwhile, had grown to despise cleaning given that Catholic school’s cleanliness policy, and all those months in the hospital had left her out of practice besides. The loops too, for that matter. Homura had frankly run out of fucks to give a few timelines in; it had been too much effort, so she’d stopped bothering with anything more than putting litter in the trash and used an illusion to cover up the rest. She’d cleaned up exactly once since she’d moved back to that old place; she’d told herself that she would bother to clean up on the day after Walpurgis Nacht, and by Madoka she’d done it. 

` Homura shook her head, then, clearing out the tangent her thoughts had taken her on. Anyhow, while the dust had been annoying the actual structures of the old house were mostly sound; there was a single broken window, but that was it. No utilities, obviously, but then Homura and Kyoko had come prepared to camp for a week or two and Miss Tomoe had picked up her own supplies yesterday. The only issue was how far the place was from the center of the village. 

It meant that it would take at least twenty minutes for the three of them to walk to school. 

That had been part of the deal, or perhaps more accurately the ultimatum. Really, though, it wasn’t either of those but rather that it was simply what was done. How could three teenage girls visit the town for a week or two and not transfer in for the duration? Homura wasn’t sure whether she was modestly disappointed or actually happy about that. On the one hand, the two-week camping adventure she’d almost gotten herself worked up for was not going to happen as planned; on the other hand, 

Miss Tomoe was already up and getting herself dressed, Homura saw. It figured; her kind of style took time to maintain and frankly Miss Tomoe had seemed somewhat relieved when it had been made clear that their school attendance was expected. Kyoko, meanwhile… had slept straight through the alarm clock they’d bought yesterday. Somehow Homura was not surprised. 

“Come on, Kyoko,” Homura told her, waving her hand over the other girl’s sleeping face. “It is time to get up for school.” 

The only response was Kyoko’s continued snoring. 

Well, that meant it was time for more severe measures. 

_How did they used to roust us sleepyheads out of bed back at the old place?_ Homura thought to herself. _Ah, right._

She took a deep breath to prepare herself, and then… 

“Wakey wakey rise and shine…” she croaked in the same off-key rendition the nuns had used to use, while poking Kyoko in the face. 

“Mzzghnwha?” her one non-Madoka friend wargled after a moment. 

“We actually have to go to school, remember?” Homura told Kyoko. 

“Don’ have to go to school no more, izz just me and the streets,” Kyoko muttered sleepily. 

“Usually yes, but our hosts require it,” Homura reminded her. 

“Meh,” Kyoko said, turning in her sleeping bag as if to go back to sleep. 

Perhaps, Homura mused, it was time for a different tactic. She wasn’t sure, but… 

“Mr. Maebara goes to the branch school here, remember?” Homura commented. 

It took a moment to sleep in, but lo and behold when it did… 

“Ah, right!” Kyoko said a little more loudly than she had probably meant to as she suddenly woke up like a kid reminded of New Years presents. 

Well, that confirmed that particular one of Homura’s sneaking suspicions. 

Kyoko had told Homura before that she did not like boys, especially not the way she’d once liked Miss Tomoe. Homura… had come to wonder about that, after spending a decent amount of time with Kyoko for the last month. Madoka was gone and Miss Miki was dead, while Miss Tomoe had been on bad terms with Homura for a while and had gotten into an argument with Kyoko a few days after Walpurgis Night that neither of those two had yet been willing to back down from. That had basically left Homura and Kyoko teaming up a couple of times by default, given that neither of them really knew anyone else, and they’d spent some downtime together as well… during which Homura had noticed the other girl staring at people from a distance a few times, and it hadn’t always been girls Kyoko had been looking at. At this point, given how Kyoko was acting right now, Homura’s best guess was that her friend was just in denial. Admittedly it was a bit weird for a girl to admit she liked girls but not boys, but Kyoko’s father had been a pastor; if he’d been anything like a couple of the nuns back at that boarding school, well, Homura could understand. 

Kyoko flew out of bed to get herself prepared – lo and behold, it had been for the best that Homura had insisted on getting a Mitakihara school uniform for her just in case. Homura, meanwhile, turned to get the gas burner on and started to heat up breakfast and then pulled out a mirror to start getting her hair into shape. Ah, there. She finished brushing it out right as the breakfast she’d fixed for herself and Kyoko finished heating – huh, Kyoko was busy trying to prettify herself rather than heading straight for the food, that was telling – and ate the noodles before getting herself into her own uniform. Miss Tomoe finally finished her drills and started heating up her own breakfast at that point, moving Kyoko’s serving of the noodles and wafting it under the other girl’s nose until she finally noticed and chowed down. 

“I would have heated something for you,” Homura lied with a polite smile on her face, “but it was separate from the supplies we brought and I did not want to search yours.” 

“That’s fine, I think I’d have preferred to fix my own anyways,” Miss Tomoe answered with the kind of cold politeness Homura was all too familiar with from her younger years. 

Homura bowed politely and headed for a corner, getting herself as prepared as she could without a proper sink, and finished putting on the ribbon that now served as her headband at about the point that Miss Tomoe finished her food and tea. It took Kyoko a few more minutes of scrambling after that, but they got out the door with about thirty minutes to spare. 

It took twenty of those minutes to get to the school, and would probably have taken even longer to find it if the kids playing in front of it hadn’t been a dead giveaway. It frankly didn’t look like a school building was supposed to, though admittedly Mitakihara Junior High didn’t either. Her home school, however, just looked more futuristic than the average school given its glass construction; this place barely looked like a school at all. Frankly it almost looked more like the kind of military facilities Homura occasionally raided for supplies than anything, although even the more dilapidated examples of those tended to have asphalt or concrete instead of the gravel yard that some of the children were playing on. 

The other half were on a grass field on the other side of the gravel, including two faces that Homura thought she recognized. 

“Oh hey, there they are!” Kyoko said, waving, and she headed off towards the grass with the other three in tow. 

“Ah hey, you found us!” Miss Houjou waved back cheerfully, while Miss Furude smiled cutely beside her. 

“So we did!” Kyoko smiled, looking around. “The boy you were with two days ago doesn’t come to this school? I thought he mentioned he did…” 

“Ah, he’s just running a little late,” Miss Hojo grinned. “He tends to walk over with Mion and Rena. But hey! We’ve got a little time.” 

“We should probably check in with the teacher first, since it’s our first day here,” Homura, who had more than a little experience with transferring in, pointed out. 

“Right, right. Door’s over that way, watch your step on the way in!” Miss Hojo said, her face belying… something Homura couldn’t place. 

“She’s Miss Hojo, yes?” Miss Tomoe said quietly as they headed inside. “I wonder why she seemed disappointed…” 

There really wasn’t much of a step to the inside of the building at all, Homura saw as they walked up to the entrance. The door was ajar for airflow, which made sense given that air conditioning was still unknown in most of the village. 

Actually, no, Homura realized as Kyoko led the way inside. She had been mistaken. The door had not been left open for airflow. 

It had instead been left open to support a washtub, which had promptly fallen on Kyoko’s head as soon as Homura’s friend had opened the door. 

“I see we have a prankster on our hands,” Miss Tomoe commented idly as Kyoko extracted herself from the washtub and they proceeded to remove their shoes. 

“Eh, could be worse,” Homura concluded. “Better washtubs than a shocker, I say.” 

“First last night and now this,” Kyoko sighed. “I’m beginning to think someone has it in for me.” 

“Sometimes there are drawbacks to just blindly marching in,” Homura deadpanned gravely. 

“Yeah, one of these days… wait a minute,” Kyoko trailed off. “Did you just make a joke?” 

“Whatever would give you that idea?” Homura replied. 

“I’ll teach you social interaction yet, won’t I?” Kyoko whooped, rather louder than she should have indoors. Judging by the hand she clamped over her mouth, the other girl realized it, too. “In unrelated news… does anyone know where we’re supposed to go to check in with the teacher? It’s been a little while, but I don’t recognize the layout here.” 

“Definitely isn’t anything like either Mitakihara Elementary or Junior High,” Miss Tomoe said, looking around. 

“Just walk up and see if we can find it?” Homura suggested for lack of better ideas. 

Further discussion along that line was promptly interrupted by a door opening ahead, from which a bald man with a mustache stuck his head out. 

“While I admire students actually enthusiastic enough to come inside early without morning duty, please remember to keep your voices… wait a minute,” the man paused. “I don’t recognize you three?” 

“I believe you should have been informed that three transfer students would be attending here for the next three weeks?” Miss Tomoe explained politely before Homura could. 

“Transfer… oh, right!” the man said. “Ah, that explains things. I am the principal, Mister Kaieda, and Miss Rumiko here will be your teacher.” 

The other adult in the room, a young woman whose hair would have almost reminded Homura of a certain former acquaintance if it had been a bit darker, acknowledged the principal with a gesture. The three of them bowed to both, which the other two acknowledged respectfully. 

“Call me Chie-sensei, if you would be so kind,” the teacher said after quickly polishing off what looked like a last bite of curry. “I hear you three are from the big city, yes?” 

“Mami Tomoe and I are from Mitakihara, though I spent a lot of time in Tokyo when I was younger,” Homura confirmed. “Kyoko Sakura—” 

“I’m from Kazamino instead, or at least was,” Kyoko said simultaneously. 

“I can’t say I’ve heard of either of those two,” the principal commented. 

“You probably haven’t… er, sorry, probably haven’t, sir,” Kyoko explained, belatedly remembering to be polite. “My— well, the way I heard it was that both towns only really developed in the last decade or so.” 

“That’s what my parents said as well,” Miss Tomoe added. “And, well, I’m finding a hard way to say this politely, but—” 

“Hinamizawa tends to be a bit behind the times?” Chie-sensei laughed. “True enough, it’s one reason I was willing to teach here. Still, I hope our little school measures up to your big-city experiences. I’ll say, it’s kind of nice to actually have students transfer in, even if only for a little while – first the Maebaras’ boy and now you three. Beats the Hojos’ boy transferring out like he did last year.” 

“Now, now,” the principal chided, “these three are only here for three weeks.” 

“At this time of year, I’m not sure that’s as reassuring as you think,” the teacher sighed, glancing at the clock. “Anyhow, the school bell will ring in a minute, so we’d better get going.” 

They filed out of the room following Chie-sensei, who dropped in a few comments on the way to the classroom. “We’re actually quite the small school here – when they tore down the old building there weren’t enough students to justify a proper new one, so we borrow space from a building the forest service wasn’t using. That’s why all the broken-down trucks are out front. It also means that there’s not enough students for separate classes – we have everyone in the same room. You’re honestly kind of lucky we’ve got spare books for you – both Mr. Maebara and Miss Ryuuguu are in eighth grade, though, and Miss Sonozaki’s in ninth.” 

“Wait…” Miss Tomoe trailed off, startled. “Miss Sonozaki is in my grade?” 

“Yeah,” Chie-sensei said matter-of-factly. 

“Huh, I would have sworn she was at least a grade above me,” Miss Tomoe continued. 

Homura was torn. On the one hand, she’d had the same thought as Miss Tomoe. On the other hand, Miss Tomoe was not one to talk. Well, actually, okay, Miss Sonozaki looked at least a year older that Miss Tomoe, which made her being in ninth grade even more ridiculous. But still. 

“As for you, Miss Sakura, I believe you said that something forced you to withdraw from school for a year?” 

Kyoko nodded glumly. 

“Luckily, I think we still have Rena’s books from last year,” Chie-sensei said. 

The three of them filed into the classroom after the teacher and waited the minute or so it took for the rest of the students to arrive, claiming an unobtrusive spot. True to Chie-sensei’s words, the twenty-odd other students ran the gamut of ages, though most were young. Honestly, Homura wasn’t entirely sure that there were any other junior high students there except the three of them and the three locals the teacher had mentioned. They’d already met Mr. Maebara and Miss Sonozaki, which meant that Miss Ryuuguu was… probably the girl with short orangey-brown hair? At any rate, the classroom was shockingly un-uniform compared to what Homura was used to. In more ways than one; the school was apparently too small to have an actual set uniform, which made their Mitakihara uniforms stand out a lot less than they would have otherwise. 

The next ritual was at this point bitterly familiar to Homura, though not for either of her companions. There was the teacher’s introduction, a short formal bow, and then the three of them filed to their seats for the lesson until everyone started to ask them things during lunch break. 

“So cute! So cute! I’m taking her home with me!” 

Wait, what? 

“No kidnapping students and taking them home, Miss Ryuuguu!” Chie-sensei’s voice called out. 

Wait, what? 

What the hell was going on, and why were Homura’s feet no longer on the floor? 

In desperation, Homura called on her shield to give her room to figure out what was going on. It reacted to her will, thankfully – Homura had not been sure it would, since she wasn’t currently wearing it correctly, and admittedly was increasingly curious why it was working when both Kyoko’s spear and Miss Tomoe’s ribbons weren’t – and time slowed to a halt, giving Homura a chance to look around and figure out what the hell was going on. 

Well, besides the part where somebody had picked her up and started carrying her out of the classroom. That, in hindsight, was rather obvious. 

Her kidnapper’s hold was obnoxiously strong, and Homura was being held so that she faced the ground, which made it annoyingly difficult to move where Homura could see her assailant A burst of shame welled up in her at the thought, the ghost of too many years spent helpless to the limitations of Homura’s own body, and it took her a moment to master it. But she did. She was still having trouble getting a good look, but she did manage to get an eye on her attacker’s skirt and that gave it away, didn’t it? It belonged to a classic sailor uniform, and there had been only one girl in the classroom wearing one. 

After a little more fruitless wriggling trying to escape Miss Ryuuguu’s grip, Homura concluded resignedly that her best option was just to wait for an opportunity. That, at least, didn’t take very long; Homura could already hear the sound of running behind her, and Miss Ryuuguu was promptly slowed by at least one other student. Her captor managed to break free, but was tripped, and her grip slipped; Homura promptly stopped time again and shifted herself slightly so that she would fall out. She promptly hit the floor, and the shift of weight sent Miss Ryuuguu tumbling face-first down the hallway. 

“Ya all right?” Kyoko asked, helping Homura to her feet while Miss Sonozaki rushed past to hold Miss Ryuuguu down, 

“Yeah, thanks,” Homura confirmed, turning to look at her assailant. 

Miss Sonozaki saw her look and turned her head while holding Rena’s arm behind her back. “Ahaha! Sorry about that; when Rena finds something she thinks is cute she has a bad habit of trying to grab it for her personal collection.” 

“Mii~” said a younger and somewhat more familiar voice from behind Homura. “I probably should have warned you that was possible, but frankly I didn’t think Rena would actually go full cute mode on any of you except maybe Miss Tomoe. Usually if Rena’s going for a person it’s Satoko and I, or maybe Keiichi when we’ve got him all dressed up for a punishment game.” 

“Well, Miss Akemi here does kind of look like you might in a couple of years,” Miss Sonozaki pointed out, still holding a moaning Miss Ryuuguu “So it kind of makes sense?” 

“Seriously, Miss Ryuuguu, you’re better than this,” said the teacher as she caught up. “Back to class, all of you. Miss Akemi, my apologies for my student’s behavior.” 

“I’ve had worse,” Homura replied without thinking, then suppressed a wince. It was true – there was a reason that boarding school had sent her from “bad heart” to “literal heart attack and over a year in the hospital” – but she hadn’t needed to say it. Nothing for it now, though. Homura picked herself up and headed back into the classroom, pulling out the books. 

It had only been a few minutes when Homura’s danger sense started tingling. She stopped time by reflex, which proved the correct decision – lo and behold, Miss Ryuuguu was right behind her with arms outstretched! Unfortunately, Homura couldn’t just move out of the way, that would blow her cover. What could she do? 

When time restarted, Homura had apparently barely shifted in her seat, and Miss Ryuuguu snagged her and started to make for the door. She didn’t make it far. One half-step lifting Homura out of her seat, another running half-step to launch herself towards the door… and suddenly Miss Ryuuguu was jerked to a trip, Homura’s table in tow! The laughter had already started by the time Miss Ryuuguu hit the ground, and it only got louder as she lifted her face up and everyone got a good look. 

“What just happened, I wonder, I wonder?” 

Well, what had happened was that Homura had taken the opportunity to tie one of her shoes to Homura’s desk. And grabbed a marker and taken the opportunity to write silly characters on her face. 

“Uh, Rena, your face…” Mr. Maebara said hesistantly. 

“Miss Ryuuguu!” the teacher’s voice called out sharply and stridently. 

“Yes?” Miss Ryuuguu asked. 

“Are you insulting curry?” Chie-sensei continued. 

Huh. Part of what Homura had written did kind of look like a curry insult, didn’t it? If you squinted, anyways. But why was this important? 

“Uh, no? What do you mean?” Miss Ryuuguu asked, confused. 

“Who insulted curry on Miss Ryuuguu’s face?” Chie-sensei demanded. 

Silence reigned. 

“Miss Akemi, was it you?” 

There once was a time when Homura might have given the answer away with her face, but that had been a lot of timelines ago. 

The teacher glanced around for a little while, then shook her head and settled for dragging Miss Ryuuguu over to the restrooms to wash off her face. 

“Ah, yes, that’s an important quality of life lesson for you three around these parts,” Miss Sonozaki whispered sagely. “Never mention delinquency around the principal, and never say anything bad about curry in Chie-sensei’s presence.” 

“Duly noted,” Miss Tomoe acknowledged. “I’m curious, though – why curry?” 

“Good question,” Miss Sonozaki shrugged. 

Chie-sensei came back in after a minute or two, Miss Ryuuguu in tow, and class settled down into something relatively normal. For a given value of normal, anyways. First, there was the obvious part where the entirety of Hinamizawa seemed to be stuck thirty years in the past while Mitakihara had always felt ten years in the future, so Homura was having to remember what class was like before the school laptop. Mind you, at least she had some experience with that – that execrable Catholic school had been old-fashioned in that regard. Miss Tomoe did not seem to be taking it well. The second thing was the rhythm that the one-class school imposed: since there simply weren’t enough students to maintain separate classes, the teacher had to try to teach nine entire grades at once. In practice, it seemed that this was handled by Chie-sensei concentrating more attention on the older students and having them teach the younger ones in turn. Homura wasn’t entirely sure she could complain. 

It beat the hell out of listening through the teacher giving the same lecture over and over again, at any rate. 

Eventually, lunch hit and with it the flood of interested questions. It was old hat for Homura, albeit the younger kids were more earnest than an eighth-grade Mitakihara Junior High class, but it was clearly kind of new for Kyoko. And probably Miss Tomoe as well? At any rate, Kyoko seemed happier than she had been in some time. Eventually most of the younger students filed away, though, leaving the two and one of them with the three local older students and the two youngsters they were already familiar with. 

“So tell me,’ Miss Sonozaki asked, “was that actually one of you who pulled that with Rena earlier? I gotta say, if so that’s kind of impressive – I can’t actually remember anyone else managing to best Rena in cute mode, you know?” 

“Ehh,” Miss Furude demurred. “Don’t I remember something like that happening with Shii sometime a while back?” 

“Nah, that was different,” Miss Sonozaki disagreed. 

“Eh, we do just fine during activities,” Mr. Maebara commented. 

“Yeah, if we’re three on one,” Miss Furude said. “Singlehandedly is another matter.” 

“It’s only three on one for you because we’re not big enough yet,” Miss Hojo chortled. “Also, this is why I keep telling you to really learn traps. Speaking of which, I gotta say – that was an inspired use of the old tied shoelaces trick. Which one of ya’ll did that? I’m kind of impressed.” 

“You’re not fooling anyone, Satoko,” Mr. Maebara laughed. 

“Nah, I’m serious! That one wasn’t me! I figure it’s gotta be one of the new girls, and I want to know who so we can team up!” 

“So that’s why I ran into a washtub when I was walking into school this morning…” Kyoko said with a light hint of menace. 

“That wasn’t meant for you,” Miss Hojo retorted, almost absentmindedly, and then realized her mistake. “I— I— I told you to watch your step heading in the door, didn’t I? That was meant for Keiichi, you three just headed in early!” 

“Somehow I don’t think that’s going to help your case any,” Miss Tomoe said softly, and given how Kyoko had been acting that morning Homura was inclined to agree. 

Indeed, it did not; Kyoko promptly started trying to catch Miss Hojo, starting an impromptu game that quickly made it impossible to concentrate on anything else. Kyoko would have almost caught the other girl, but got tripped by a string that had been attached to two desks. A Pyrrhic victory, that; Miss Ryuuguu promptly joined in the effort to catch Miss Hojo, and the resulting ruckus lasted until the lunch bell rang and class was rejoined for the afternoon. 

When the bell finally rang to let out school at the end of the day, Homura and the other two started to pack up and head out, only to be promptly stopped by Miss Sonozaki who asked them to stay outside a minute as she talked over something with a few of the other students. There was a brief commotion inside, and then Miss Sonozaki poked her head out and invited them all inside. 

“Right!” she said as the three of them filed back inside. “Rika said that she told you earlier that it was common knowledge around here that school’s the boring part you put up with to get to the fun stuff?” 

“Yeah,” Kyoko confirmed. 

“Well, here’s why. We’ve talked it over and we’d like to make you honorary members of the Games Club for as long as you’re here!” 

“The Games Club?” someone gamely asked, and it took a half-second for Homura to realize that someone had been her. 

“Yeah, the Games Club!” Miss Sonozaki said brightly. “So. You know how in bigger schools and especially once you get up to high school you have extracurricular clubs that meet after school and do things? Well, we’re a bit small around these parts to have a full version of that, but ever since… well, anyhow, we set up something like that for ourselves.” 

“Yeah, didn’t we tell you that everyone knows around here that the classes are just the boring stuff you sit through to get to the good part of the day?” Mr. Maebara joined in. 

“So… given the name, presumably this is a club where you play games after school,” Homura reasoned. “What kind of games?” 

“Sometimes we do stuff outdoors, but more often we pull out one of the board games from that cabinet behind me,” Miss Sonozaki said. “Don’t worry if you don’t know the rules, half the time we don’t either. 

“Sounds like a good idea to me, eh?” Kyoko said, elbowing Homura; Homura’s friend sometimes forgot both etiquette and past requests when she got worked up. As if reading Homura’s vague annoyance, Kyoko realized her mistake with an “Oops! Sorry” a moment later. 

“I am not sure we will be able to make it every day,” Homura said, far more evenly than her thoughts were because damn her but she was getting worked up for being invited into something in spite of herself, “but I cannot see a reason not to join in when we can.” 

“Eh, Mion usually has to miss at least one day a week for her family business, you should be fine,” Miss Furude smiled. 

“I would gladly participate in your activity,” Miss Tomoe agreed. 

“So!” Miss Sonozaki said brightly. “Welcome to the Club! First rule of the Club: we all call each other by our first names here. We’re friends, right? You can’t call your friends by their last name when you’re just among yourselves! Too formal! Too formal! So, unless you’re having to deal with me in my formal capacity, call me Mion.” 

“Rena.” 

“Rika.” 

“Satoko!” 

“I’m Keiichi, yo!” 

There was a brief pause as the three of them parsed the sentence – it was a bit sudden, wasn’t it? 

“I’m Kyoko!” 

Well, okay, two of them anyways. 

“Call me Mami.” 

“Homura,” Homura said finally, after a moment to let her damn fool mind stop jamming. 

“Right!” Mion continued. “Now, Homura, Kyoko, Mami, the second rule of Games Club: win! Or else! Speaking of that, let’s see what game to play today…” 

Rika herself had gotten dressed up in a maid outfit and cat ears. Again. It was one of Mion’s standbys, after all, when she was handing out punishment game costumes. Rika had almost grown fond of it. Keiichi, meanwhile… well, as the one guy in the club these days and a newcomer to boot it was everyone’s duty to pick on him, so all three of the winners had pulled out all the stops there. He’d been stuffed into a girl’s gym uniform, and given both a frilly tutu and that inflatable swan floater Mion kept around. Not that uncommon, really, except that Mion had gone for the gym uniform instead of her usual choice. 

That probably had a lot to do with how Mami was wearing it instead. 

Oh yes, Mion had taken one look at the newcomers and stuffed Mami into one of the school swimsuits instead. The one that got less use, at that – the bigger one got hauled out a fair bit, especially once Keiichi acclimated himself in a few more days since he adored sticking Mion in it whenever possible, but Mami was only as tall as Rena so it was a little too big for her. So Rena had pointed out the other old school swimsuit, the one she rarely got stuffed into because there were better things to punish her with. It was a little too small on Rena these days, let alone the newcomer with her even fuller frame; it was clearly riding up in uncomfortable places, and Mami was having to make an effort not to have her boobs spill out of it. (One of these days Rika was going to actually live long enough to get big boobs herself…) The effect was magnificent, as punishment games went; Rika had to admit that Mion did in fact have an eye for these things. 

The other two were in somewhat different outfits. Somehow Mion had apparently gotten her hands on an honest-to-goodness Christian nun’s habit, the kind you occasionally saw picture of from overseas. Actually, now that Rika thought about it that boarding school Shion had once gone to had been a Catholic one, hadn’t it? That probably explained it. Anyhow, she’d stuffed Kyoko in it, to no small amount of blushing. Especially since it was somewhat moth-eaten, leaving quite a few small holes in it – Homura had commented that this apparently made for a vaguely amusing pun in English. 

Homura, meanwhile, was still putting on her punishment outfit. Apparently she had also picked up an old-fashioned hakama (“just in case”), like the one Rika wore as the Furude Shrine miko except a dark blue instead of red and with some embroidering on the front. She’d taken a look at Homura, then another, and then plucked the outfit out of its rack for Homura’s punishment game. Rika didn’t really understand why that outfit would work for a punishment game specifically, but apparently it was actually embarrassing the other girl so Mion’s eye had seen correctly once again. Something about it, though… it was giving Rika an odd sensation, one she really wasn’t familiar with and couldn’t place. 

As usual, once everyone who’d lost had gotten into their assigned outfits Mion led the club on a walk along one of the main village paths, where everyone would see them. Rika frankly didn’t mind her outfit – it was second only to her actual miko uniform for getting the old ladies in town to fawn over her even more than usual, and the cat ears suited her – which meant it was a very good thing indeed that she’d long since gotten enough control over her face to avoid tipping Mion off. Keiichi, typically, was griping about the embarrassing girls’ costume. It was weird, as usual; it came off somehow as both ultra-earnest and half-hearted at the same time. But still, usual. It was the three newcomers Rika was curious about. 

Homura – who Rika was walking closest to – was hard to read. There just wasn’t much there. Resignation? Kyoko on the other side of Homura was the exact opposite, utterly failing to keep a furious blush off her face, presumably out of embarrassment. Or maybe not; she almost looked like she had the same look on her face that Mion and Rena sometimes got around Keiichi. Was Kyoko going to be yet another member of the “caught a cold” club around Keiichi, as Satoko would obliviously put it? That could get interesting. But no, it was Mami’s expression that Rika found most curious. She was crying intermittently… and yet the rest of her face seemed to wear a genuine smile. 

“Is something wrong?” Rika asked Mami curiously. 

“No, no, I don’t think so,” the drill-haired girl replied. “Not here, at least.” She paused for a moment, then continued quietly, perhaps to herself. “I’ve gotten so used to not crying in fear… it’s strange, then, that I find myself doing so as soon as I don’t have to.” 

It was a rather pretty sentiment, Rika thought. On the other hand… not having to fear? In Hinamizawa? At this time of year? 

Well, that wasn’t going to last very long. 

A brief commotion ensured in front; Rika’s view was blocked by the girls in front, and it took her a second to get where she could see past them. Ah, it was just Dr. Irie out on his rounds. The man found her – and Satoko, for that matter – a little cuter than was probably healthy, but he wasn’t dangerous. Probably. Certainly in a hundred years of loops he’d never gone out of line. 

“I see Rika lost a club game again,” Dr. Irie commiserated, failing to keep his enjoyment off his face. “You should wear that on your doctor’s visits more often! Ah, but Satoko won?” 

“Last person not to run out of chips,” Rena needled – not like she was one to talk, Mion had ended with the most. 

“And I see our newcomer… wait,” Dr. Irie trailed off. “Did you pick up three more newcomers while I wasn’t paying attention?” 

It was probably telling, Rika reflected, that it had taken him until now to notice that there were eight people in the Club today rather than five. 

“Hadn’t you heard?” Mion asked him before anyone else could. “These three are on a trip here for a few weeks. Something about investigating the culture of the region, I think?” 

“Huh, really?” Dr. Irie replied, his face showing concern. “… You are?” 

Mami, Kyoko, and Homura introduced themselves to the older man, albeit formally. 

“Miss Akemi, Miss Sakura, and Miss Tomoe? I’m Dr. Irie, I run the town clinic that they named after me for some fool reason. Speaking of the clinic, you three should probably drop by sometime soon, definitely before you leave,” Irie continued. “There’s a bunch of older people around here and we should probably make sure you don’t have anything contagious!” 

_Ah, foolish, foolish,_ Rika thought. She knew what he was actually talking about, and should have thought of it herself. 

Irie laughed nervously, then continued. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find the clinic, it’s the big modern concrete facility on the other side of town. Actually, now that I think about these two young ones have an appointment in a couple of days – I could get you in for a checkup afterwards?” 

It took a minute or two before the three new girls agreed, Mami first and then the others; there was something to the look on the other two’s faces that caught Rika’s eye, though she couldn’t place it Then Irie waved and headed off, leaving their little party alone, not too far off Rika’s family’s land. 

“That’s a cute little building over there,” Mami commented, looking at something on the other side of the street. 

“Which one?” Satoko asked the older girl. 

“That one over there, by the pond,” Mami explained. 

“Wha— oh, right, that one,” Satoko said. “You know, I know I’ve seen that building before but I forget what it’s for?” 

“Oh, that’s my family’s old guest teahouse – for ceremonies, right? It’s just me nowadays, so nobody uses it much anymore,” Rika explained automatically as she noticed the place they were talking about. 

Then her brain kicked in. 

Rika looked at the little building, then again, eyeing it carefully. It was set off in an island from the little pond at the base of that hill, yes, with the bridge that connected it to one of the paths across her family’s land. It was a distinctive bridge, too, the paint and wood and plants that grew on it almost gave the impression of a rainbow over the water. The cottage itself was slightly old-fashioned, small, and charming. It had always been there, and Rika remembered walking by it to school when she was younger. So why, then, did Rika feel like she had never actually seen it before? It almost felt like one of those shops out of old stories, the ones that hadn’t been there last week and would be gone tomorrow… 

“Rika!” Satoko almost shouted, rudely waving a hand in front of Rika’s face. 

“Sorry, what’s the matter?” Rika asked. 

“Well,” Mion said from the front of the group having turned back to look at her, “Mami here was noting how charming that cottage is and kind of wanted to head inside and take a look. I mean, it’s your family’s cottage so…” 

“I don’t see a problem with it?” Rika replied, almost uncertainly. Privately, she concluded that even if there was it wasn’t like she hadn’t done worse. Well, would be doing worse. Actually, no, at this point it was back to had done? She’d lost track. At any rate, it wasn’t like she wasn’t the one who’d asked for the new lock on the Tool Shrine. 

The eight of them filtered over the bridge to the front of the place. For a moment they were stymied as they couldn’t find the key, but then Mami straight-up stumbled on it and they headed in. 

To Rika’s surprise, there was already someone there. 

Admittedly, Rika had wondered where the resident and visiting kami had gone off to today. Neither one had shown up at school, which was kind of surprising given Hanyuu’s love of watching Club activities and this Madoka’s tendency to drape herself around Homura’s neck. What Madoka was up to remained a mystery, but Hanyuu was seated at a table inside, adjacent to some porcelain tea cups that were inexplicably already set. Rika’s oldest companion eyed Mami for a moment before waving. 

It was a very tired wave. Something was still wearing on Hanyuu. 

But what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Homura's punishment game outfit here is inspired by [this piece of fanart](https://blesseria.tumblr.com/post/619366269888692224/miko-homura-painted-especially-for-the-price-list).


	3. Colligentur Nimbi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the idyllic days of early June 1983 in Hinamizawa. Where children and teenagers (residents and visitors) spend their afternoons in carefree childhood games.
> 
> Pay no attention to the storm clouds dimly visible on the horizon...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter content warning: Vague/veiled references to underage sexuality.

The next morning, Rika woke up.  


Ah, of course. It had been one of _those_ dreams.  


She got them occasionally right around the last days of June 1983 – which meant usually once or twice a month these days, with how short the loop had gotten. When she’d discussed them with Hanyuu her friend had just commented that Rika would get used to them eventually, occasionally coupled with a probing question about whether Rika remembered who had been in the dream. It was usually someone much older – Chie-sensei, or Nurse Takano down at the clinic, or that investigator from the national police who Rika had met a few times a very long time ago. Last night, for once… not so much. It had been Homura, hadn’t it? She’d been wearing the same hakama she had been yesterday.  


Rika paused for a moment. There had been another dream before that, hadn’t there? Or at the beginning of it? She strained to try and remember it, but there wasn’t much there. Some sort of strange monster. Oh, and some kind of weird scythe that was somehow also the hoe she used during the Watanagashi ceremonies?  


After a moment Rika concluded she wouldn’t be able to remember anything else, so she shook her head to clear it and looked at the clock. Ah, less than thirty minutes before she needed to wake up for school. No real point in trying to go back to bed at this hour, unfortunately, though she would be tired later. Were there any errands they needed to run that Rika could get done with the extra time? No, too early in the morning, no one was open yet. She didn’t want to wake Satoko up, and there was nothing good on this early in the morning anyways.  


She could, of course, get ready for school early, so she did so. Satoko still wasn’t up yet, so Rika left her a note and headed out the door early. She could check the shrine, at least. That was definitely something she could do.  


It took Rika a little longer to get there than she had planned; she’d been heading off in the wrong direction across town without thinking about it before she noticed. Strange. That wasn’t really like her. She padded up towards the shrine, glancing it over, and then stopped.  


There was something there that wasn’t supposed to be: a bow, lying against the outer wall of the shrine. She took a closer look at it. Not a proper daikyu or hankyu; a Western design, then? Symmetrical, at least. Mion would probably know more, she’d been taught at least a passing knowledge of kyuudo by her grandmother. Of course, there was also the other question: why was it here? It presumably wasn’t an offering, otherwise it would have been left inside, though she’d want to check with Hanyuu just in case. Nobody else in the village would have something like this. Well, except maybe Tomitake, but he’d never done something like this before. Also, now that Rika thought about it was he even in the village yet? His trip would only start next week, wouldn't it.  


Then again… speaking of thinking about it, now that she did this fragment had three visitors who simply hadn’t been here before, didn’t it? Maybe it was one of theirs?  


“Huh,” someone said, and now that Rika thought about it that someone had been her. _Well, now I have a reason to head to the other side of town, don’t I?_  


She did.  


It occurred to her halfway through the walk that she could have just headed to school and asked about the bow there. Ah well, she was already halfway there. And had nothing better to do. And… she wanted to go visit the new girls, didn’t she? Huh. She felt more hopeful than she had in a long time.  


As she padded down to that old abandoned subdivision, though, her eye was caught by something else on the old red arcing footbridge. it went over a stream that fed into the river, though people had stopped using it in favor of the new bridge for cars even before the quarry had closed and everyone moved out. (Wait… had the footbridge always been there? Rika wasn’t sure.) Today, however, there were two people on it. Two people only Rika would be able to see, because while they might be people they weren’t exactly human.  


For the first time, Rika had seen Hanyuu and Madoka in the same place.  


They were quarreling, naturally.  


Sadly, Rika wasn’t close enough to make out exactly what they were arguing over. She walked over quietly, but still no luck without getting closer than she was willing to go. Maybe something about witches, if she’d heard correctly? Probably not. It would have been awfully weird, if so – it was the oni you had to watch out for in these parts, there was a reason the swamp had been given its old name. Maybe it was something about Rika’s duties tending the shrine? That would make sense, Hanyuu hadn’t been terribly interested in welcoming Madoka after all.  


Rika cleared her head and walked down to the place the three visitors were staying at. She brightened up when she noticed Homura out front, and immediately headed over to say hi.  


“Good morning! Sorry to bother you at this hour, but I woke up early and was checking to make sure the shrine was in good condition and… is this yours?” she asked the other girl, feeling surprisingly goofy about it. “It wasn’t left as an offering, and it’s not something anyone around here would have…”  


Homura eyed it and then her; there was something Rika couldn’t quite place on her face. Reverence? After a moment, she finally spoke. “It is not any of ours, I do not think… but I think I might know who it belongs to? I will keep it safe, if that is what you are asking.”  


She took the longbow off Rika’s hands, almost tenderly.  


“Ah, hey, yer one of the girls from the club, right?” another voice called out from the door of the abandoned cottage, followed by a head and a ponytail of red hair. “Rika, right?”  


“Mii~” Rika smiled in lieu of a more formal confirmation.  


“She brought something over to see if it belonged to one of us,” Homura explained.  


“Did it?” the other girl – Kyoko, right? – asked.  


“More or less, I think,” Homura agreed.  


“And I’ll bet you didn’t even think to ask whether she wanted to wait a minute to walk over to school with us,” Kyoko teased the other girl. “… I mean, she did us a favor, right?”  


“Well…” Rika started to say but was cut off.  


“We’re almost ready here, and it’s lonely just walking around by yourself, you know?” Kyoko commented, a faraway look on her face.  


“I suppose you have a point,” Homura conceded. “Besides, club members are supposed to be friends, now that I think about it.”  


“Nipa~!” Rika smiled. “I think I’ll wait for you three over by the old red footbridge, though. I thought I saw a bird there on the way over here and I want to see if it’s still there.” She paused for a moment, then decided it was worth asking. “If you don’t mind me asking, since it’s a bit impolite… how long have you three known each other?”  


“I met Kyoko and Mami To— Mami about… two months ago, right? Sorry, I lose track sometimes.”  


“Mami and I knew each other before that, but we lost touch for a while,” Kyoko added helpfully.  


“I see,” Rika nodded. “I’ll meet back up with you in a bit, okay?”  


Hmm. Something about the way Homura had responded had felt… familiar? It didn’t matter, though. Rika padded back over to the bridge, where she found that Hanyuu was the only goddess left. Her oldest friend was looking a bit exhausted, so she headed over to cheer her up.  


After a little while, Rika decided it was time to chance a question she was having an increasingly hard time ignoring.  


“Why are you so hostile towards this O-Madoka?” she asked Hanyuu.  


Hanyuu turned to stare at her, and Rika hastened to explain. “I mean, I get that you don’t like her, I just kind of want to know why? Because I encountered her one or two times while you were doing your stuff and she seemed fine and I want to know what you’re seeing that I’m not? You’re the goddess, I figure you know better than I do but I don’t know what that is?”  


Hanyuu seemed mollified at that, but it still took her a little while to speak. “It’s… not strictly speaking something you’d need to be concerned with outside of your duties,” she said finally. “I don’t know whether I can put it into words, really. It’s just that… you know how gods have proper offerings, right? It’s not possible to give the right offerings to her and me at the same time. Well, it’s not exactly like that at all, but that’s the closest I can come to it.”  


Hanyuu turned away after that, but Rika could hear her muttering. “It doesn’t even work! Not forever. I mean, it’s not like I’ve been doing better these days but at least it could…”  


Rika tried to reassure Hanyuu, but Hanyuu seemed lost in her thoughts.  


Rika was, too, once she met up with the visiting girls and headed to class.  


Luckily, it wasn’t like there was going to be anything new in the lesson.

&npsp

Homura had just started to pack her things after the end-of-school bell rang when Kyoko and Miss Tomoe got up and made their way to her seat.  


“Man, I’d forgotten just how boring school was,” Kyoko complained as the two of them ushered her out into the hall, away from the entrance to the building.  


“Eh, not as bad as the school back home in my opinion,” Homura demurred. “I almost kind of like the dynamic where we help the younger kids with the lesson.”  


“It’s great!” Miss Tomoe agreed happily. “I’d already wondered if I should look at teaching when I get old enough…”  


_If_ , Homura corrected her mentally. But then, Homura could understand. If you admitted the odds, it might make you less likely to overcome them.  


“Well, yeah, you two would,” Kyoko muttered darkly.  


“You’re not the only one who spent more than a year out of school,” Homura pointed out quietly, trying to comfort Kyoko. “It was not easy for me at first either. I’m not sure why I am doing better than you in class now – maybe I managed to keep up with my schoolwork better because of where I was, but sometimes I think it was related to me becoming a magical girl somehow.  


That was a lie. Homura knew very well indeed why she was doing better than Kyoko, and it had everything to do with her wish. Lots of time to practice, to be precise. She hadn’t been that much better in class than Kyoko was now for the first few loops. She pushed the thought out of her mind, or tried to anyways. Too late, sadly. Her academics had been one of the few relatively bright spots back at that accursed boarding school, and Homura was uncomfortably aware that losing that point of pride had been one of two things that had nearly unmade her.  


Well, three, if you counted that Artist Witch.  


“Of course, about half of that is because I like Chie-sensei more as a teacher than Saotome-sensei,” Homura admitted. _The other half, of course, is actual new material,_ she continued in the privacy of her own mind.  


“Eh, she can go on about, uh, certain things a little longer than necessary,” Kyoko objected.  


“I would rather have that than constant complaining about a failed love life,” Homura pointed out. “At least I might learn something interesting about curry. It had gotten to the point where I was feeling sorry for poor Nakazawa, which is saying something.”  


“Nakazawa?” Miss Tomoe asked.  


“Boy in my homeroom, always the butt of Saotome-sensei’s comments. I know you knew Miss Miki, I do not know whether she ever brought him up or not,” Homura explained.  


“Oh, him,” Miss Tomoe realized. “I seem to recall Miss Miki was of the opinion that your homeroom teacher had something of a crush on him.”  


“She picked on him rather too much for me to believe that,” Homura replied skeptically.  


“That’s how some people show their affection, especially if they can’t admit it to themselves,” Miss Tomoe retorted gently.  


Hmm. Homura was inclined to dismiss that, but now that she thought about it maybe there was something to it? It wasn’t a terrible description of how Kyoko and Miss Miki tended to interact when they first met, at least until the latter’s untimely demise.  


“So, what do you think about the rest of the class?” Kyoko asked happily.  


“Gossip? Really?” Homura replied tiredly.  


“Well, yeah, nothing better to do before club activities,” Kyoko replied. “Mion seems to have her head screwed on straight. Satoko reminds me of you, somehow, though I wish she’d set her pranks for someone else.”  


“I kind of think she’s setting them for Keiichi and you keep walking into them instead,” Miss Tomoe said, more quietly than usual.  


Kyoko went visibly red in the face at the comment.  


“Just ask him out unless you’re worried about how you’ll feel in four weeks,” Homura advised her friend. “I know you’re not usually into guys but you sure seem to be into this one, and we all remember how the Mister Kamijo situation turned out, do we not?”  


“Eh… eh… it’s not like that!” Kyoko replied, somewhat undercut by how her voice sounded straight out of one of the TV dramas Homura’s father had watched when she was young.  


There was a moment of embarrassed silence after that.  


“The thing that interests me,” Miss Tomoe said finally, quietly and much more seriously, “is Rika.”  


“How so?” Kyoko asked.  


“Just… something that doesn’t make sense,” Miss Tomoe explained. “So, she’s the daughter of one of the local Great Families and popular, but as far as I can tell she doesn’t have a reputation for being smart.”  


“Yeah, and?” Kyoko prodded.  


“Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on everyone during class, and I noticed something. Everyone else here has needed help with the classwork from other students at least once in the two days we’ve been here. Well, except Mion who usually gets it from the teacher instead. Everyone except Rika. I’ve even noticed her helping the older students a couple of times.” Miss Tomoe paused. “Why, then, does she not appear to have a reputation as a good student?”  


“Iunno,” Kyoko shrugged. “’s not like I ever really paid attention to that kind ’f thing.”  


“Yes you did,” Miss Tomoe replied sharply. “Back in the very beginning, when we first met. I suppose the reason you stopped is obvious, but it wasn’t always that way and I’ll admit I kind of miss the you I first met.”  


They both fell silent at that.  


“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Kyoko replied. “Either way, I wasn’t finished. ‘Cause I may not care, but Sayaka back when she was still with us? She kind of did. And maybe ma’ brain is playing tricks on me, but… I kinda remember her saying something like that about you, Homura?”  


_Huh, really?_  


“She said it kind of pissed her off,” Kyoko continued.  


Ah, well, that made sense. As for the comment itself? Well, of course, there was a reason Homura had been unusually accurate when answering class questions for a month after transferring into Mitakihara, but that definitely wasn’t what was going on here. It wasn’t like Rika had been jumping timelines for what had probably been at least the better part of a decade, after all.  


Of course, Homura didn’t actually want to come out and say that, either.  


“I found the month after I transferred into Mitakihara Junior High to be unusually easy for me academically,” Homura said instead, choosing her words. “I suppose I just had more time than usual to study.”  


Of course, Homura thought, there was always the possibility that Miss Tomoe was seeing something that wasn’t there. She would have to actually pay attention to Rika in class one of these days.  


“TIME FOR CLUB ACTIVITIES!” a girl’s voice outside interrupted – Satoko, if Homura was any judge. Which admittedly she wasn’t always.  


Well, that meant it was time to switch gears then.  


“So, which game today, which game today?” Rena asked as the three of them walked back into the classroom to join up with the others.  


“Well, we did a card game yesterday, so I was thinking maybe it was time for something outdoors today,” Mion mused. “Like, oh, hide and seek? Wait, no, better idea. Zombie tag!”  


“Zombie tag?” Miss Tomoe asked.  


“Zombie tag!” Mion confirmed. “Or, well, close enough. Don’t you city slickers know how to play?”  


“That’s the version of tag where you become it by being tagged but you can’t become not it by tagging, right?” Homura asked, hoping for clarification – she honestly wasn’t sure, it wasn’t like she’d actually been able to participate prior to her making a contract. “I don’t remember anything about hiding, though.”  


“I think that sounds right?” Kyoko said. “Honestly, iunno. I ain’t played schoolyard games in years, and I’m not sure either of these two have either. Mami’s parents were nice but there wasn’t a lot of time for play with how they raised her, and I don’t know the specifics but Homura’s said she wouldn’t have been able to do the arcade until earlier this year.”  


“How they raised her?” Satoko asked, confused.  


“Kyoko, you shouldn’t really be talking about that,” Miss Tomoe chided Kyoko, “but I suppose it’s not like she’s entirely wrong. Mind you, part of that was that back in those days I wasn’t really all that interested in schoolyard games. Now I find that I was missing something.”  


“The other part of that,” Kyoko said teasingly in a mock whisper, “is that excessive play is unbecoming of a young lady.”  


“Not like that stopped some of my teachers from belittling me for not being able to play,” Homura muttered darkly.  


“Right. Anyhow, we’ll need someone to be the first it,” Mion said brightly. “Let me get the straws for us to draw…”  


A couple of minutes later, after everyone had put on their outdoor shoes and left the building, Mion covered her eyes and started counting to 108 while everyone else scattered to the wind.  


Homura did not, not exactly. She had a slightly different plan. Her first thought had been going up, since nobody ever looked up, but she wasn’t sure that was legal and anyhow Kyoko wasn’t nobody. Which left obvious option 2: blatant dirty cheating. She just needed some places where she could hear anyone coming before they could see her.  


Homura willed, and time stopped.  


Honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure about doing this. Hinamizawa seemed safer than she had ever thought possible, but then being a magical girl seemed nice on the surface, didn’t it? But then, Homura knew better why she’d done it almost in spite of herself. She’d gotten tired of losing a very long time ago.  


She glanced around. A few nooks and corners, the roof – oh look, Kyoko was already on it – and the gym storage. No doubt somebody was going to be in there already. Honestly, the best spot for her here was probably back in the school building, but this was an outdoor shoe activity.  


Oh right, there were also the old construction vehicles that had been left in what was now the school yard. Those would do nicely.  


The door was locked, but it wasn’t like Homura hadn’t known how to pick locks for at least two dozen timelines now. She closed the door back up, contorted herself to hunker down beneath the dash of an old backhoe, and waited.  


And waited.  


It was an increasingly long wait, with the eternal tension of knowing someone else could try the door any second and the incredible boredom of, well, everything else about waiting soundlessly in a hot vehicle cabin while nothing visible happened.  


Just various noises in the distance.  


Homura barely recognized some of them. There was the incessant hum of the June cicadas, but then wasn’t there always? It had been so long, but Homura vaguely remembered them from when she was younger. They’d been audible sometimes even in her hospital room. There were other cries, too, sharper ones. Were those birds or something else.  


Homura glanced up, noticing that a handful of puffy clouds were visible through the window of the old backhoe from where she was hiding. Not really that interesting, but better than nothing. Madoka probably would have been happy to watch them, but then she was not Madoka.  
Homura repositioned herself slightly more comfortably and waited.  


"Thump-thump."  


Was that the other kids in the club?  


Homura paused time briefly and looked around. No, there was no-one around. It had to be something else. Maybe a bird had landed and flown off?  


Homura settled down again and continued to wait.  


"Thump-thump."  


It was the same thumping noise, so Homura didn’t roust herself from her perch this time, but still kept her ears pricked just the same.  


"Thump-thump."  


"Thump-thump."  


It was getting faster, wasn’t it?  


And then Homura realized what she was actually hearing.  


How annoying. Now she would be paying attention to her heart rate again, too, because before surgery and magic she’d always had to, and since she was paying attention to it her heart rate was only going to get faster and this was going to go nowhere good and she was still getting stuck in this loop and—  


Homura’s thoughts were distracted by another noise, one that sounded like kids yelling. For a moment Homura worried about the worst, but then the voices faded away again like they were getting more distant and Homura relaxed for a moment. Or had she just been fooled by the acoustics of the vehicle? But no, she still couldn’t hear them and relaxed for a moment. Then she took one of her guns out of its storage, field-stripping and reassembling it several times. It helped, these days, kept her mind grounded. Pity about the whole hideously illegal part of it, but it couldn’t be helped.  


Homura stowed the pistol back in her shield and took a deep breath. It hadn’t calmed her down as much as it should have. What was up with her today? She’d been less anxious hunting Witches and Wraiths than she was here sitting in some old backhoe checking whether some other kids her age were going to find her hiding place.  


“Ya’ll don’t know Homura,” Kyoko’s voice rang out not too far away from the backhoe. “She’s got a knack for getting into odd places. I’d check the vehicles over here.”  


Well then. It looked like it was time to abandon her position.  


She waited three heartbeats as the steps started to get closer, then stopped time and bailed, closing the door behind her and heading for the other side of the school. If Kyoko had been caught – and she’d definitely been caught, she was near the front of the zombies – up wasn’t going to be an option. Actually, was going up even allowed? That might have been what the others had been yelling about earlier.  


She glanced over to the side as she headed towards the small class garden – well, class was a bit of a stretch, apparently it de facto belonged to the teacher for her curry. A splay of black hair that looked almost blue even in the timestop greyscape caught her eye. Ah, huh. That was going to be Rika, wasn’t it? She’d found a pretty decent spot, hiding in a shadowed corner of the large sink trough. Homura looked at her again, and almost frowned. Rika stood out, somehow, in the greyed-out world, didn’t she? Odd.  


Homura legged it, settling down near the edge of the trees where the borrowed school building bordered the forest preserve and ducking back into the flow of time. If Kyoko was helping everyone else lead the hunt for her then she wasn’t sure she could find a place to hide, not after over a month of working together. But there were other ways to cheat.  


Also, Homura reflected, this way she didn’t seem to be nearly so stressed out about the situation.  


When about half of the other Club members spotted her a few minutes later, Homura was ready. She moved behind the corner of the building relative to them and stopped time again, heading back towards the other side of what served as the schoolyard.  


It took her longer than she had expected, as shortly before reaching the place she had been aiming for Homura found the ground under her feet falling away as she tumbled into a concealed pit! There had been a point, Homura reflected, when that would have been enough to prevent her escape – not all that long ago, as the calendar went. Not, however, anymore. She found handholds and started to climb up.  


She made it about halfway up before slipping and falling back to the bottom of the pit.  


_Hmph,_ she thought. _Well then, be that way._  


She started the climb once more on a different part of the wall.  


And promptly fell back down on her ass again.  


Huh. The walls of the pit were surprisingly slick, weren’t they? And the soil wasn’t very well packed, either.  


Once more Homura tried to climb out, and once more she promptly fell back to the bottom of the pit in a shower of dirt.  


Hmm. This was actually surprisingly tricky. And, Homura realized, if she kept it up for too long she was going to tire herself out.  


She glanced over the rounded side of the pit, looking for a way out.  


And then something caught her eye, something stuck in the side. She looked at it more closely – it seemed like some sort of metal plate? With a design on it?  


Homura couldn’t make it out clearly enough, so she tried to pull it out.  


It took a little effort. And when it did it became clear why – quite a bit of the side of the pit came down with it, partially burying Homura.  


When she extracted herself from the debris, Homura noted that there was now something of a channel in the side of pit. Also, the surface of the pit looked closer?  


Oh, of course. Homura nearly slapped herself upside the head for not thinking of it sooner. The loose dirt of the pit was difficult to climb up, but it also meant that she could dig it down, making the pit wider but shallower.  


A couple of subjective minutes later Homura managed to get a firm pathway and crested the surface of the pit. She glanced at her shield – that had spent more of her magic than she would have liked. Hopefully the end of the round was soon.  


Homura glanced at the trinket that had inadvertently pointed her to the solution to her predicament. Hmm. It almost looked like some sort of ceremonial medal or necklace, albeit larger and differently shaped. It had rounded edges, concave on one pair of sides and convex on the other, and was slightly curved as if originally meant to be worn. There was a symbol on it, a crescent over a somewhat unfamiliar character. Oyashiro-sama, perhaps?  


Huh. With how fortunate a find it had been, Homura had almost thought – well, hoped – it would have some sort of marking related to Madoka instead.  


She legged it to a slightly different part of the field, stowing the found item in her shield, and then finally let time resume after crouching behind another piece of construction equipment.  


Lo and behold, the other members of the Club noticed the large hole in the schoolyard – how could they not? - and started making a beeline for the presumably trapped girl (or Keiichi) inside it. Homura started to pull out her phone to check it, realized the time was probably going to be off even if it wasn’t dead, and resolved to pick up a cheap watch at the earliest possibility. Well, with the angle of the sun there couldn’t be much more time before they needed to wrap up. Hopefully the time everyone else would need to get back across the schoolyard would do it.  


Homura stopped time briefly one last time while she crossed the main yard again, then headed over to crouch in the corner of one of the buildings to wait out the clock.  


Or that was the plan, at least – except for a light tap on her arm and the sinking feeling of realization as Homura looked down and noticed Satoko very smugly smiling up at her.  


“Tag! You’re it!”  


_Well, fuck._

Rika watched as everyone gathered in front of the school, trying her best to keep her finest shit-eating grin off of her face.  


“Well, excellent! That’s the very last member of the club!” Mion smiled as Satoko led Homura back to where everyone else was. “And just in time, too, we ran out of time about a minute ago. And since we got absolutely everyone tagged, I guess that means I win!”  


“Nicely done!” Rika said, clapping. “Satoko, you finally found where Homura was headed off to this time, I take it? Also, wait, Keiichi got tagged? I thought he was still free.”  


It wouldn’t do to have everyone else realize what was going on too quickly, after all.  


“I got Rena while she wasn’t paying attention, then got her to go cute mode on Keiichi,” Mion explained.  


“Kyoko forfeited by going on the roof, then Kyoko got Mami. Unfortunate, since Mami’s the one who figured out where I had gone and she runs faster than I do,” Satoko explained. “But I did figure out where Homura was going and get there first! Which accounts for everyone except you! So, now that you mention it, who got you, anyways? Wasn’t me, you were tagged when I found you. I guess Rena cute moded you down after she got Keiichi?”  


“Uhh…” Homura trailed off as she thought about what Mion was saying. “Rika was pretty clearly still hiding over by the school garden when I bailed on the backhoe, and I am pretty sure I remember both Rena and Keiichi being in the group that was trying to track me down.”  


“Neither of us tagged her,” Keiichi said.  


“It wasn’t me or Mami, either,” Kyoko added.  


“That makes no sense, Rika was already tagged when I found her over by the gardens…” Satoko said thoughtfully.  


There was a beat.  


“… You pulled one of my tricks, didn’t you, Rika?” Mion said finally. “You were never actually tagged, you just pretended you were.”  


“Nipa~!” Rika confirmed, no longer bothering to hide her grin as she plotted exactly what punishment game to subject everyone else to.

Homura sighed as she went marching down the side of Hinamizawa’s main road, once again clad in highly embarrassing clothing.  


Rika had decided on basically the same punishment game as yesterday, and for Homura she’d pulled out all the stops – Homura was now wearing cat ears, a school swimsuit, and a collar with a bell. Homura felt singled out, frankly. Her costume was probably twice as elaborate as anyone else’s. Well, except maybe Keiichi in the maid outfit.  


Adding insult to injury, Rena had been in what the old-timers here all called Cute Mode since basically the moment she’d laid eyes on Homura’s penalty outfit. It didn’t quite mesh with her own penalty outfit – she was wearing little more than a bikini, apparently a personal swimsuit she’d had with her for whatever reason, along with her beret. Of course, Homura had been saved so far by the other part of the punishment – Rika had instructed Rena to tie the bikini top ever so slightly loose, and she’d been preoccupied making sure it didn’t fall off and expose her. (A surprisingly adult punishment really, Homura thought. Rika couldn’t be older than twelve, right?)  


Unfortunately, they were about to reach the end of the designated walk, where a shed provided a convenient place to change back, and that meant Homura’s protection was about to come to an end. Especially since Rena was going to be one of the first non-Keiichi group to change back.  


Lo and behold, when Rena got out of the shed she immediately turned towards Homura and brought her arms up like she did. Then she  


“No, no,” Rena muttered absentmindedly. “Rena musn’t take Homunyan home, no, no. But I want to take her home, though…”  


Homura was going to be annoyed, but… there was something about the situation. She was feeling something else, instead. Not unhappy, not angry. Almost… interested? Not what the idea but why the idea?  


Oh, of course. That was it.  


“You know,” Homura said after a moment, “I am getting increasingly curious, Rena— Rena. You keep talking about wanting to take me home.”  


“She does it to us all the time too, don’t feel alone,” Rika piped up from behind her.  


“Let us say you actually did it. Then what?” Homura asked.  


Rena didn’t seem to do anything for a second.  


“What would I do, I wonder, I wonder?” Rena said finally.  


Then she hoisted Homura under her arm and started running.  


This time, Homura didn’t fight it. Instead she watched as best she could as Rena ran… and ran… and kept running. Just how far was Rena going to run, anyways? And just how strong was this girl? Homura had known magical girls who couldn’t do what Rena was doing. (Admittedly, one of them was herself, but still.)  


Eventually Rena came to a stop, letting Homura go abruptly as she caught her breath. “You’re… a little heavier than Rika or Satoko,” she wheezed after a moment. “Though Kenta-kun is heavier than you by quite a bit! But then I didn’t try to run with him.” She paused for a moment. “Over there,” she pointed, away from the center of town. “That’s where I take things.”  


Homura looked where she was pointing. It… looked like a dump. Possibly literally.  


Rena started walking into the place and Homura followed, out of curiosity as much as anything. Towers of various kinds of detritus surrounded her – old household appliances, a few wrecked vehicles, and some even larger pieces that Homura didn’t recognize. In between them, there were the smaller things – old toys, various cans and bottles, pieces of paper, and the like. Truly a dump. It seemed a little large for a mere village’s dump, though.  


“It wasn’t always a dump, no, no,” Rena explained when Homura asked her about it. “They were going to build a dam here a while back. It would have submerged the entire village! I was in Ibaraki at the time, so I don’t know everything, but eventually it got canceled. The workers left all their stuff behind and people started adding their own to the pile. It’s mostly junk, but you can find interesting things around here if you look for it. That’s why I come here!”  


Rena hummed, turned around, and headed for one particular pile of junk, extracting something from it. Homura almost started at the sight of what she pulled out, which made no sense. It was a nose hatchet. Just a nose hatchet, nothing less, nothing more. Homura has seen far scarier things, beginning with but by no means limited to a Witch capable of leveling cities and an immanent one far stronger than that. For heavens’ sake, she routinely used guns and her pipe bombs had turned into an actual hobby! Why, then, was a mere nose hatchet spooking her like this?  


“Is something wrong, I wonder, I wonder?” Rena asked, interrupting Homura’s thoughts.  


“I… do not think so,” Homura replied, slower than she might have otherwise, and did not know if it was a lie.  


“This is my secret tool! Well, for a given value of secret. Somebody left this perfectly good tool here a while back, and it’s just perfect for finding the treasure,” Rena explained.  


“Treasure?” Homura asked.  


“Treasure!” Rena replied excitedly. “People just throw out all sorts of things sometimes. I find the cutest things here! Oh hey, look, here’s an example!”  


She pulled up a little yard decoration, one of those gauche pink flamingos out of America. Or at least that was what it had been, once. It had gotten stained at some point, leaving at least half of its back a weird brownish shade. Homura… was hesitant to call it cute. Or even remotely attractive. Madoka certainly wouldn’t have.  


“Or take Kenta-kun. I almost forgot where I was in here, but he’s over there,” Rena continued.  
Homura looked at the spot where Rena had gestured towards. There was a bust there, almost like one of those statues of the founder you sometimes found near Knoxville Fried Chicken restaurants.  


“Kenta-kun, you say,” Homura said. “He almost looks like a Ferdinand to me, somehow.”  


She wasn’t sure why the statue reminded her of a Ferdinand, but it did. Weird.  


Rena fell silent for just a moment. “No, he’s not a Ferdinand, he’s Kenta-kun,” she then said, in a low flat voice unlike any Homura had heard the other girl use before. “Maybe he was before, but he stopped being that when he came to Hinamizawa.”  


… _Well, that was weird._  


“You know, this… is not a bad place,” Homura lied politely, though she wasn’t sure it was all that much of a lie. “It certainly means something to you, does it not?”  


Rena nodded.  


“Then, I… suppose I thank you for showing me something so dear to you,” Homura continued, now all sincere and probably all awkward. “At least, I hope I am saying that right.”  


“Rena… thinks Rena understands what you are trying to say?” the other girl replied uncertainly. “It was my pleasure.”  


“If I am going to have dinner with the other two girls I had better get going back to where we are staying soon,” Homura said. “Do you mind if I change back into normal clothes around the corner? It does not look like anyone else is here.”  


Rena gestured agreement again.  


As Homura turned to walk away, lost in her thoughts, she heard Rena’s voice again – softly, in the low flat voice.  


“Thank you… for trying to understand.”  


_She’s not being sincere,_ a little mental voice said. Homura shooed it off. There was no reason to think that, after all.  


Why, then, was the thought refusing to leave her head?  


As she walked out of the impromptu dump, newly changed out, an old stack of yellowing papers caught Homura’s eye. She picked one up and took a look at it.  


“Extra! Extra! Brutal Bizarre Murder at the Dam Site!”  


Huh, really?  


Homura picked it up and read over it. Apparently Rena had not been lying about this place once being the site of a planned dam, not that she would have had reason to – by the date on the old paper, it would have been over three decades ago now, back in the late 1970s. (Homura glanced at the paper again. Huh, not a true crime rag. Wait, no, it was… but looking at the date, this was from about the same era, wasn’t it? Weird, then. It was astonishingly well preserved for something over thirty years old.) If the story was to be believed, after a year or two of work several of the workers had snapped and murdered their manager, then hacked apart the body to try to hide the evidence. They’d gotten cold feet and turned themselves in, leading law enforcement to the body pieces. All of them save one, who had never been seen again. And the construction manager’s arm, which had vanished as well.  


“Perhaps the arm is still buried somewhere at the dam site?” the article finished. “Buried or hidden under some piece of junk, waiting to surprise some unwary future visitor.”  


Huh.  


Was that the buried treasure Rena was trying to dig up here?  


But why?  


And why was Homura’s imagination providing her with the unpleasant image of that nose hatchet Rena had been carrying chopping through some poor man’s body?  


Perhaps, Homura reflected, she had been more unwise than she had thought burning quite that much magical power earlier.  


She was still reasonably well stocked, but you never knew when you’d need everything you could muster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Ah, Homuhomu, ever walking into the dramatic irony.  
> \- Ah, Rika, at the awkward stage where she's *just* starting to go through puberty. (The main reason I headcanon her as 11 - and really the only reason, since I only just noticed that I botched my math, what with the whole "there are only five years between six consecutive Watanagashis".) Luckily, she's not yet old enough to actually realize what's going on.


	4. Miraculum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Hinamizawa in the early part of the middle of June. An idyllic place. It's not just the activities of the local school's only club, though. It's things like friends getting up early so they can walk to class together, or the preparations for the charming town summer festival!

Homura yawned and regretted not spending those extra fifteen minutes in bed. 

Like, really, what was Miss Tomoe thinking? She’d rousted Homura and Kyoko awake and insisted that they all get going even earlier than usual. Ugh. Getting up as early as Homura actually did was bad enough, the worst thing about school was that it started at eight in the fucking morning. And Mami had woken her up right in the middle of a dream, too, which never helped. (It had even been something other than the repeating dreams about facing Walpurgisnacht again – of course, those never had the problem with being drowsy when you woke up from them.) Kyoko, as ever, looked like she might be having it even worse, and was still haggardly blinking her eyes. 

Also, now that Homura looked at the surroundings again… they’d overshot the school, hadn’t they? Just where was Miss Tomoe leading the two of them? 

That question, at least, was resolved a couple of minutes later, when Homura spotted three familiar figures waiting by what looked like a bus stop. 

“Ah! You three made it!” Mion called out in the distance, waving her hand. 

Miss Tomoe bowed back politely. Hmm. It was kind of funny, wasn’t it? Homura still hadn’t managed to forget the etiquette lessons that place had beaten into her, and sometimes actually noticed them whether she wanted to or not; Miss Tomoe cared about them a lot more than Mion seemed to, despite Mion being of higher social status than even Miss Tomoe. Then again, it wasn’t even every town where one of the most prominent local clans was a Yakuza family. And now that Homura thought about it she didn’t remember noticing Mion’s etiquette when she’d attended the meeting where her grandmother had granted three visitors her blessing, had she? It was probably just a Club thing. 

“It took a little effort, but I managed to get both of them here too,” Miss Tomoe replied. 

Miss Tomoe turned to face Kyoko and Homura. “We’ve headed to school with the two younger girls before, but I thought we should meet with the rest of the Club before school at least once. It’s a bit annoying since they live on the other side of the village, but I thought it would be worth it.” 

“Ah, is that why I noticed you using the pay phone last night?” Kyoko asked. 

“Yeah, I only thought of it after Club activities had ended for the day,” Miss Tomoe agreed. 

“Perhaps we should get going,” Homura said. “We do not want to be late.” 

“I made sure to get everyone here a little early to avoid that problem,” Miss Tomoe replied. “But you have a point. If we don’t get going soon, then we might actually be late after all. Shall we?” 

They headed off towards the school. If the goal had been for everyone to have a chance to get to know each other a little better, it wasn’t working very well – Homura and Kyoko were too sleepy to say much. It was mostly Miss Tomoe and the three local girls talking. There was some interesting details in the conversation, though – Keiichi had apparently only moved to the town a couple of weeks ago himself. Interesting; Homura would never have guessed that given how familiar he seemed with both Mion and Rena. Then again, the teacher had said something about that at some point, hadn’t she? 

“So, I’m kind of curious,” Keiichi asked, turning around. “A nun’s just, like, the Christian version of a miko, right? Like… I’m really don’t get why you looked so uncomfortable wearing one a couple of days ago.” 

Not a terribly polite thing to ask, really, was it? Kyoko was busy furiously blushing again, and having no luck getting words out. 

“Ah, wait, that was a little too personal of a question, wasn’t it?” Keiichi said, realizing his mistake. 

“Nah, it’s fine,” Kyoko said after a moment. “See, it’s kind of an awkward thing, you know. Because… the thing is, I was raised Christian. I guess I still am, really, though I don’t think about it much these days. But nuns aren’t Christian, they’re Catholic. That’s what Dad always said, anyways.” 

“Nuns aren’t really like a miko, Ma—Keiichi,” Homura butted in, unable to stop herself even if she did catch herself before saying Keiichi’s full name. “Think more Buddhist and less Shinto – if I remember correctly you can use ‘monk’ to refer to their male counterparts, just like in Buddhism. And yeah, I’m pretty sure not every branch of Christianity has them. Catholicism does, and I think there’s at least one other that does over in eastern Europe – Orthotic, I think, or something like that – but the Protestants don’t, and I’m pretty sure Kyoko once told me her family was from one of those.” 

“Anglican,” Kyoko specified. 

“Yeah, I could have told you that you were a bit off,” Mion agreed, speaking to Keiichi, before turning to Homura. “How did you learn about that? I picked up a little from one of my relatives, I’m kind of curious where you did.” 

“Eh, it’s not that much of a secret,” Homura said airily. “I went to a Catholic boarding school for a few years before I moved to Mitakihara.” 

“Wait, seriously?” Mion asked, surprised. “You’ve got something in common with Shion, then, she went to one called St. Lucia’s near Tokyo for quite a while.” 

Homura’s blood ran cold. 

“You’re joking,” she said as evenly as she could manage, halting in her tracks. 

“Not at all,” Mion replied. “Why? You’ve heard of it?” 

“St. Lucia’s Academy, Kokoro Street, Edogawa Ward?” Homura pressed. 

“Yeah, that’s the… wait, you’re not saying that’s where you—” Mion realized. 

“That is, in fact, exactly where I attended school for a while,” Homura confirmed. “I have to say I feel sorry for your relative, that place was an atrocity to God and man.” 

“Huh, you’re even less polite on the subject than Shion is,” Mion noted. “Maybe Shion wasn’t exaggerating as much as I thought – don’t get me wrong, it was clear the place was bad, but I figured Shion was making it worse than it was just to pull my leg.” Mion thought for a moment. “How did you get out of there, anyways, if you got sent there? The way Shion tells it that place was always somewhere for wealthy families to stick girls they didn’t want around for whatever reason, it’s not easy to leave.” 

Homura had to think for a moment before deciding to answer, until her dislike of talking about her past self was overcome by her desire to make clear exactly how bad that hellhole of a school was. “My relatives finally decided to pull me out after the place literally gave me a heart attack. Now, admittedly part of that was a congenital heart weakness, but I probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly so bad without, well, everything about that wretched place.” She paused for a moment, sighing. “On the bright side, at least that incident finally convinced Father to go ahead and actually get me that heart surgery he’d been trying to avoid for a decade. Still had to spend over two years in the hospital.” 

Half of the group winced – including Miss Tomoe, to Homura’s surprise. 

“He wasn’t willing to get heart surgery for his own daughter?” 

“Of course not. Why would he?” 

They stood for a minute in silence, before a question occurred to Homura. 

“You said your relative who went to that damn academy was named Shion?” she asked Mion. 

“Yeah,” Mion agreed. “She works over at a place called Angel Mort’s over in Okinomiya, if you want to meet her yourself.” 

… And that meant Homura had already met the other girl, hadn’t she? 

“Unless you met her while you were there? You’re about the same age,” Mion continued. “She looks a lot like me.” 

“I don’t think so – I think there was only one Shion I met there, and she was from up in Hokkaido,” Homura said. “That said, what I was going to ask was: how did your relative get out of St. Lucia’s, anyways? You didn’t say.” 

“You didn’t hear this from me, but she worked out a big whole plan, diverted the patrols, and actually managed to jump the fence and escape from the place, with the help of another one of my relatives who was assigned to keep an eye on her,” Mion explained. “The way she told it, I figured they’d still be talking about it there.” 

No, that made no sense, Homura thought, the only person who’d managed to do that was… wait. Was it even possible? That had been a Shion Sonozaki… oh fuck, Mion was another Sonozaki, wasn’t she? It made no sense, but… 

“Wait, you’re saying your relative is the Girl Who Got Away?” Homura asked, startled, as she followed her train of logic to its only reasonable conclusion. “Did she ever say anything about Kajiya-sensei?” 

“No, I… wait, you mean the teacher she faked having an affair with?” Mion realized. 

“Arrrgh!” Homura yelled, shaking her fist and then slapping herself on the forehead in a display only partially performative. “I knew you were a Sonozaki, too, I probably should have realized faster.” 

The bell rang then, interrupting their conversation. 

Homura took the opportunity to pull her fellow magical girls aside for a minute before they headed in. 

“Well, we can now say with absolute confidence that something is up here,” Homura told the other two girls quietly. 

“Why do you say that?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Because Mion was more correct than she knew,” Homura explained, still keeping her voice low. “The story of the Girl Who Got Away was very well known when I was still at St. Lucia’s. Very well known indeed.” 

Homura paused for a moment for dramatic effect before continuing. 

“So well known, in fact, that they were still talking about it when I was there, nearly thirty years afterwards.” 

The other two girls were very, very quiet for the rest of the walk to the classroom, and for the rest of the morning thereafter. As was Homura, if she was going to be honest with herself. There were too many questions running through her head, and no chance to answer them – or, in one case, no chance to confirm her suspicion. It was a long, slow crawl to get to lunchtime, made worse by the part where Homura found that she was simply unable to concentrate on anything the teacher was saying. 

It was like the day before Walpurgisnacht all over again, except with less Madoka. 

Once the lunch bell finally rang, Kyoko and Miss Tomoe made a beeline for Homura; Homura herself, meanwhile, was busy looking for something. 

“You know,” Miss Tomoe asked, “we really need to talk some more about what you mentioned this morning…” 

“Yes, but. One moment, please,” Homura responded, more rudely than she might have liked. Ah, surely it couldn’t be that hard to— ah! There it was! The calendar. And it was one that showed the months like the one back at the hospital. 

Speaking of which… 

Homura turned the pages back. There was May… and there was April… and there was March. She checked for a specific date, and nodded before turning back to the others. 

“Right! That is what I wanted to see,” she explained. “Maybe we should talk about this outside?” 

They dodged around a corner, setting up near a disused stairwell that led towards the second floor. 

“So,” Kyoko said before Miss Tomoe could, “if I was followin’ ya correctly you think that Hinamizawa is somehow backwards in time relative to where we come from?” 

“That is one of the two reasons I was checking the calendar. It is clear enough – the year on it is Showa 58, 1983 in the Western system,” Homura noted. “You can check it yourself when we get back.” 

“But then… why didn’t we notice it before?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Funny you would mention that,” Homura almost smirked. “I mentioned that I was in the hospital for a couple of years between that incident and transferring into Mitakihara Junior High, right? There was a calendar on the other side of the wall, opposite my bed, And it occurred to me: in all the time I was there, how often did I actually look at the date on the calendar? Had I actually looked at the one here?” 

“But… wouldn’t we have noticed something was off from the dates?” Kyoko asked. “Like… the calendar changes each year, right?” 

“Yes and no,” Homura replied. “It does change, but it loops around every so often, right? If you wait long enough the calendar will show the right days of the week again. And so I checked the calendar. The day I got out of the hospital was Wednesday, March the 16th; I doubt I will ever forget that, I was looking forward to it so much.” 

A half-truth, of course, but it wasn’t like Homura was going to tell Miss Tomoe the real reason just yet. Or Kyoko, for that matter. 

“So I turned the class calendar back to March, and my suspicion was confirmed: March 16th, 1983 was also a Wednesday,” Homura finished explaining. “Which means every day after it is also going to be on the same day of the week as when we come from.” 

“So we would have had to actually look at the date,” Miss Tomoe said thoughtfully, “and none of us actually thought to do that. Change blindness.” 

“But… how?” Kyoko asked, cutting to the core of things. “Is this even possible? I mean, it kind of has to be but…” 

“I… have seen things and heard things before that make me think that is within the purvey of magic,” Homura said, hesitantly and more quietly than before. “Real things, I think. So it should be possible. But the scale… we are positing that an entire town has effectively been held thirty years in the past. I am not sure I have ever heard of magic being used at such a scale.” 

Another lie. Homura was definitely aware of one event of even greater scale, if her memories could be trusted, and Walpurgisnacht’s effects probably counted as comparable as well. But then, both of those had required extraordinary circumstances, hadn’t they? 

“That’s technically not true,” Miss Tomoe replied. “It could have just sent the three of us backwards in time instead.” 

Hmm. That was true. Although… that still didn’t quite add up. It couldn’t have been a single event, because Miss Tomoe had arrived separately from the two of them and they’d noticed how old everything looked even before that, hadn’t they? 

“Either way,” Kyoko said, “can we… can we get back?” 

Well, there was only one answer to that question, wasn’t there? 

“I do not know.” 

Today, sadly, was not going to have any club activities. 

It was sad but necessary, Rika knew. There was one duty Rika took seriously beyond all others, and today was the first rehearsal for part of it. The most important part of it, really. And with the amount of time per fragment now only a few weeks long, really the only part of it too. 

She padded down the main road towards the shrine, eyeing the start of preparations for Watanagashi. The very first stall was going up, that was always nice to see. It was a little earlier than usual, though, wasn’t it? Only by a few days, though. Mostly, though, what Rika could see was the earlier stages of preparing – making sure everything was where it needed to be so that when the time came to actually set up everything would be ready. 

Rika glanced over the people working on the preparations and was pleasantly surprised – most of the rest of the club was there, helping with the work. Mion and Rena dragging Keiichi over to lend a hand was expected – and it was both of them today, apparently Mion wasn’t being called out to family business – but Rika was pleasantly surprised to see the three visiting girls working to help out as well. She hadn’t been entirely sure they would take that step. Only Satoko was absent, and there wasn’t really much Satoko could do to help out. 

Rika took a closer look at the rest of the Club in the distance. Huh, that was kind of interesting. Kyoko was actually trying to help with the men’s work of moving and raising boards, which was kind of gauche but then the girls were from the big city. More surprisingly, she wasn’t actually doing all that bad of a job with it, either. It was taking her a little bit of visible effort, but she was lifting and hauling some of the big boards on her own. There was a decent chance she was the second-strongest girl in the Club, behind only Rena in cute mode. Mami, meanwhile, was listening carefully to some of the village adults until she dashed over to grab some cups of water and bring them closer to the rest of the workers. Homura… she actually kind of reminded Rika of what Satoko would have looked like if she was here and a few years younger. She looked a little lost. 

Rika was going to be late if she stopped to watch for too long, so she regretfully turned and started heading back down to the Shrine. She had to pause one more time, though, when she noticed a pile of material by the road. That… didn’t look familiar? She eyed it again, noting its contents – she could make out a few doll-like costumes, an odd white effigy, and some disassembled wooden thing. Weird. Rika didn’t remember seeing anything like that in past Watanagashis. 

Did she? 

No, she confirmed to herself after a moment’s thought. She’d have remembered those. Had somebody had a new idea for a stall and managed to get it through the village elders? That would be a first. 

After a couple of minutes more Rika turned and headed towards the inviting front of the Furude Shrine. The three old ladies who helped her preparation were there, as they always were. It was a reassuring sight. 

Rika stepped inside, and one of the ladies reverently took off her miko hakama and gently gave it to Rika; she then ducked behind the privacy screen and put it on along with the ritual sandals. Then she stepped out so the older ladies could look her over and make sure it was on properly – they tugged a fold here, adjusted how it hung there, and retied the belt. Then they took the headdress and placed it on her, followed by handing Rika the ceremonial hoe. 

Huh. As she looked over herself in the mirror, somehow the hoe once again reminded Rika of a scythe, like in that dream yesterday. And the headdress… the headdress seemed appropriate, somehow. She’d been wearing something like it in the dream too, hadn’t she? 

No matter. Rika had a duty to perform. 

She stepped out of the back of the Shrine, carefully, purposefully, to the beat of the drum. One step forward, another step forward, left foot, right foot. After enough of them she came to the bed of cotton, now laid on top of the shrine’s donation box. She lifted the hoe to a beat. She held for a beat. She swung for a beat. Ah, off her form! She’d hit the bottom of the cotton container too hard and the hoe had bounced up. Ah well, that was what practice was for. Left, right, left. Another swing. Right, left, right. Another swing. Ah, that one had been perfect. Left, right, left. One last swing. Now the partitioning. She stepped, still to the drum, and cut, then waited a beat and cut again further away. She stepped again, and cut twice again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Around the corner. Two more from the long side. Around the corner. Again, six more times. Around the last corner. Again, twice more. Raise hoe. Step to the center of the front of the box. Turn to face the crowd. Bow. Done. 

She stepped formally back into the interior of the Shrine, smiling at the old ladies as she did so. They praised her; it had been a good effort for a first rehearsal, as it usually was after this many fragments. There were mistakes, though, as usual. One of them had been obvious with the bouncing hoe, but there were a couple of other spots Rika had missed in her concentration. 

Rika practiced the ceremony twice more. There were fewer mistakes, as there should have been, though Rika was badly embarrassed the third time when she lost her grip on the hoe and it slid out of her hands. 

As she finished for the last time, Rika glanced back out at the rest of the initial preparations below. It was a familiar… 

Rika looked back at the proceedings below, now with focus. They weren’t quite familiar. Something was ever so slightly off, a little dissonant note in something that had become so boringly routine as to be a comfort (especially compared to the myriad possible ways that things would go sour no later than a couple of days after the festival). It took a moment for Rika to place the issue. There was… too much activity for this early of a practice? Well, the stalls were going up a little early this time around, but that happened sometimes. What else? Oh, of course. How had it taken her that long to notice what exactly was amiss? It wasn’t like it wasn’t the single biggest pile of activity down there, around the pile of stuff that Rika had noticed earlier. The costumes and effigies were… being handed out to people? Weird, Rika didn’t remember anything like that. And a couple of middle-aged men were busily erecting the wooden thing into… something. Rika didn’t quite recognize it; it had an elongated rectangular base, with two beams sticking up at one end in turn connected by a headboard. There was another board connecting the two beams at the base where they met the rest of the frame; it had a semicircular hole cut out from the top of it. There was a pulley at the center of the top board, with a rope attached to it; the people working on it had built some sort of angular thing out of bamboo and fabric, the right size to fit between the vertical boards, and it looked like it was designed to be lifted with the rope. The overall effect… Rika had misgivings about it. Frankly, it reminded her of some of the old gear in the Tool Shrine. 

“Huh, that’s more people out doing things for the festival than I remember…” Rika trailed off thoughtfully, half to herself, while still looking out the door to the Shrine. 

“Well, but of course. The procession takes about as much effort for its participants as your duties do, you know,” said one of the older ladies. 

“The procession?” Rika asked confusedly. 

Now that Rika thought about it, it sounded kind of familiar… 

“The Sinner’s Procession, of course,” the same lady answered matter-of-factly, as a teacher would remind a pupil. “The great procession where the avatar of the town’s sins is led down the street to their mock execution! How could you forget? Your memory for these things is usually so flawless, Rika-chama…” 

“Now, now, give her a break,” one of the other ladies chided the first. “We haven’t been able to hold the procession for a couple of years. A year is a lot longer when you’re still a child, after all!” 

“I’m kind of surprised they approved of us holding it this year, with what happened to Tamae Hojo last year,” the third lady chimed in. 

“You have to have it every so often or it’s a problem, you know!” the first lady laughed. 

Yes, that made— 

No. _No._ This was wrong. This was not how it was supposed to be. 

Part of Rika’s memory was telling her that the procession had always been part of the festivities but it was _lying_ , Rika knew it. She’d been diligently practicing this one duty off and on for a hundred years, all through her and Hanyuu’s journey through the fragments. She might have to practice, partially to be sure and partially because the muscle memory didn’t always carry over, but she knew the sequence of events backwards and forwards, including where on that fateful night the wheels of fate could come awry. And she did not remember any of this business about a sinner’s procession. It didn’t even make sense, it was redundant! The cotton might have had a dual symbolism, given what Rika had seen of her family’s archives, but the one thing it definitely represented was impurity and sin, kegare and tsumi – that was why you sent the cotton drifting down the river in the first place! It soaked up the trangressions and then you sent it down the river to wash them away in the stream! That was why the Cotton-Drifting Festival had its name in the first place! 

“We’ll have to find a suitable person to walk the procession, though,” the old woman said hazily, jolting Rika out of her thoughts – she noticed her hands had clenched and forced them open, though luckily no one had noticed. “Maybe one of the visitors? That black-haired girl had the right look for it – Miss Akemi, was it?” 

Rika listened in abject horror. Had the old ladies gone _mad_? 

This was Hinamizawa! A town with a noted reputation for hostility to outsiders! And they wanted to ask one of them to play the role of symbolic sacrifice in the village’s main festival? Really? That had Level 5 written all over it, and while these ladies might not recognize the proper term for it they would certainly recognize the village’s colloquial one: Oyashiro-sama’s Curse. 

Rika forced herself to appear more calm than she felt. “Why do you say that?” she asked the three ladies. “Wouldn’t somebody from here who’s familiar with the ceremony make more sense?” 

“It’s the looks, the looks,” said one of the older ladies cheerfully. “The long black hair, neatly cut, the rest of how she dresses and carries herself. She just looks the part, she’s the best fit I’ve seen in years. Well, except maybe you, but you’re the reincarnation and too young besides.” 

“Yes, but she’s also not local and not familiar with the customs,” Rika pointed out. 

“I don’t see why that would be a problem. It’s an honor to play the role of the Sinner, after all,” one of the ladies scoffed. 

“I suppose. Still… shouldn’t you at least sit down with her and explain?” 

The old ladies didn’t seem to pay her any attention. 

Rika asked again. 

Still no answer. It was as if they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hear her. Which made no sense. Rika sharpened her eyes and glanced at them – no attention to her, and it almost looked like their expressions were glazed. 

But then, Rika realized with a sinking feeling, could she even trust her own senses? She was broadly familiar with the stages of the Syndrome – thank you Nurse Takano for being willing to tell her about some of the basics – and there had been that incident with Hanyuu a few days back. 

For that matter, could she even trust her own senses on the procession being new? 

Rika shook her head to clear it. That was a rabbit hole going nowhere good and she knew it. Instead she headed back to change back into normal clothes and get a little privacy to think. 

So, Rika thought to herself as she took off the ceremonial outfit from the headdress down, why? Why would the older ladies be so set on doing something as foolish as asking a visitor to play the role of a symbolic sacrifice on the night of Watanagashi here in Hinamizawa? Were they just not thinking? Possible, but this was Hinamizawa during the second half of June so that was never a safe assumption. Could it be the hardliners? They were heavily rumored to exist, probably among the elderly; indeed, that was the most common theory about who was responsible for the Chain, especially the people who were demoned away. It was possible they had taken umbrage about the newcomers. But then… why only object now, and not when the three asked for permission to visit? Why not object to Tomitake? Why single out Homura? Also, now that Rika thought about it the permission issue stuck out more than she had first thought – the most common rumor about the hardliners was that Oryou Sonozaki was their de facto leader, and Godmother Oryou had personally approved the three visiting girls staying in town. Unless it had been intentional entrapment? Rika wouldn’t put it beyond Godmother Oryou, admittedly. Or had Homura somehow trespassed after being allowed and Rika not been aware of it? 

Of course, there was an obvious way to check for that possibility. Asking Godmother Oryou directly would be unwise, but there were other ways if you knew the right phrasing and had access to the right channels. 

She needed to be home for that, of course, which took a few minutes. Satoko was home but busy, which suited Rika fine as she took out the telephone and called Mion. 

“This is the Sonozaki estate. What is the reason for your call?” answered a servant, as ever with impeccable politeness that somehow conveyed a slightly menacing undertone. 

“This is Rika Furude. Is Mion available?” Rika replied. 

“Ah, I believe she is,” replied the servant, now without that hint of menace since Rika had shown a valid reason for her call (well, and because Rika was Rika) – it was part of maintaining the Sonozaki family image, from what Mion had once told her. “I will let her know you wish to call her. Please hold.” 

It took a moment for Mion to reach the phone, as always. 

“You wanted to speak to me, Rika?” Mion’s voice answered a minute later, polite but not nearly as formal (Mion never was when she knew it was another Club member calling). 

“Yes,” Rika confirmed. “You know the festival procession before I carve the cotton during Watanagashi?” 

“Yes,” Mion confirmed. 

“Would you happen to know if Godmother Oryou made any special requests about who was to play the role of the sinner?” Rika asked her. 

“Ah… no, I don’t remember Onibaba saying anything like that,” Mion said after a moment. 

“I see,” Rika replied, both reassured and troubled. “I should probably let you get back to your duties?” 

“Nah, it’s fine, there’s so little to do that she’s got me familiarizing myself with the family accounts again,” Mion laughed. “Why do you ask, anyways?” 

She would ask that, wouldn’t she? 

“I overheard somebody talking about the selection when I was practicing today and given how they were talking I was curious,” Rika answered carefully after a moment – it wasn’t a lie, exactly, but also not really the truth. 

“Ah, rumors,” Mion said knowingly. 

“That and something else,” Rika agreed. “Usually I would ignore it, but in this case… well, your grandmother is kind of scary when she’s not being nice, better safe than sorry.” 

“Ah, true enough,” Mion replied, still with that knowing tone to her voice. Mion would understand better than most, though. Neither of them really had to worry about Godmother Oryou the way most people did, albeit for different reasons, but neither wanted to incur the old lady’s wrath without reason. 

They stayed on the phone for a little while after that, but it quickly became clear that there wasn’t really anything else for them to talk about so they hung up. Thankfully, Mion hadn’t asked her about what the rumor had said. Still, Rika couldn’t help but feeling that she’d still said too much. 

Satoko had left behind the television and was either doing homework or out working on traps again, so Rika was once again left alone with her thoughts. What could she do here? Convincing the festival organizers wasn’t going to work, it wasn’t like most of the adults here ever listened to her even if they did adore her. Asking the Sonozakis was a risky option at best. And the worst part of it was that the nature of the issue meant that the path that would otherwise have looked the most promising – tell the three girls with an outsider’s perspective what was going on and ask them to look into it – was likely to just lead them down the path to the wheels of fate going awry. So… what? 

Plus, of course, there was the whole issue with a new part of the Cotton-Drifting Festival just suddenly appearing out of nowhere. 

Well, there was one obvious place to ask about the latter issue, at least. Researching Hinamizawa’s customs and festivals was Nurse Takano’s hobby, after all, and luckily Rika would almost certainly be seeing her when they went for Satoko’s checkup tomorrow. She would probably have something about the Sinner’s Procession, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t loaned Rika some of her notebooks in a few fragments before. 

Rika sighed and turned to look out the window. 

And her curiosity and concern were piqued once again. 

For just a moment, she’d been looking through the window at just the right angle to see her face’s reflection in it. 

Except… somehow, impossibly, that reflection had been wearing a headdress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- And so it begins...
> 
> \- Chapter's still not coming out quite right, I'll probably update it at some point.
> 
> \- That said, one part comes out just fine: the two absolutely glorious spots where the Higurashi and Madoka settings mesh together perfectly. In particular, there are few things finer than looking over things going "can I justify the boarding school Shion went to being a Catholic boarding school?" and realizing that no justification is necessary because it was outright canon to start with! (Given that, I'm kind of suspicious that there's a general class overtone to Catholic boarding schools in Japan that doesn't translate well to a Western audience.)
> 
> (- There's a nonzero chance that I've missed When They Cry canon about the exact location of St. Lucia's, however, especially if it shows up somewhere in Umineko.)
> 
> \- The problem with Homura as a viewpoint character is that certain parts of social interactions fly over her head. Can you figure out what escaped her this time?
> 
> \- AIUI "kegare" in particular lacks a really accurate translation into English (or at least modern English); a reasonably accurate translation would be something like "ritual impurity picked up during the course of everyday existence".


	5. Adyta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome, visiting magical girls, to Hinamizawa's premier medical facility, the Irie Clinic! Where you may find a certain nurse... and with it, her notebooks...

It was time. 

Homura waved goodbye to Keiichi, Mion, and Rena, and with Kyoko, Rika, Satoko, and Miss Tomoe started the walk over towards the Irie Clinic. 

Homura was torn. On the one hand, the lack of air conditioning was one of the worst things about Hinamizawa and the clinic probably had it. On the other hand, well, it was a medical clinic. 

Homura was very, very tired of medical clinics. 

Which probably explained why she was dragging her feet relative to the youngsters. 

Less so why Kyoko was walking at her speed instead of with the girls up ahead. Homura had agreed to pay any medical bills, after all. 

As the two younger girls got ahead, Miss Tomoe stopped and turned to face Kyoko. 

“All this mooning around isn’t like you, Kyoko,” she said. “Especially not these days. Are you going to ask the boy out or not?” 

“Ehhh?” Kyoko replied with that characteristic rising tone of the surprised. “Wha-wha-what makes you think I like Keiichi?” 

“I have eyes,” Miss Tomoe replied drolly. 

“As much as I hate agreeing with Mi— Mami, uh, it has been obvious enough for me to notice,” Homura stepped in. “Which is saying something.” 

“Yeah, but he’s a boy,” Kyoko retorted, failing to keep her face from noticeably reddening. 

“I would have thought that would be an obstacle, too,” Miss Tomoe replied, “but apparently not.” 

Homura clamped her mouth shut before she could inadvertently voice any sneaking suspicions about how Kyoko would be a lot more willing to admit attraction to boys if her father hadn’t torched his relationship with his daughter so spectacularly. (And, well, literally.) 

“Eh, but— but— he’s a boy! If I was going to date him, he’s supposed to ask me out and not vice versa, right!” Kyoko said, blushing furiously. 

“Girls handing their love confessions to a boy is a trope for a reason,” Miss Tomoe replied, almost acidly. “Besides, Kyoko, I know you. Or at least knew you, and I don’t think that particular thing has changed. If he’s not going to accept you asking him out, it was never going to work anyways, was it?” 

“Back me up here, Homura!” Kyoko said desperately. 

“Eh,” Homura demurred. “I do not know why you are asking me, considering that I have even less experience in these matters than you do. Hmm. On the one hand, I can think of a couple of very good reasons why I would hesitate to start dating someone right now that would also apply to you, mostly relating to the calendar. On the other hand… if you are going to do it anyways, Kyoko, just do it and be done with it. Remember how badly things turned out for Miss Miki after asking her crush out?” 

“She… died in battle with Wraiths a couple of days after she asked out Mr. Kamijou?” Kyoko said. 

What, that hadn’t been – oh, right. Timelines. Homura forgot, sometimes. This time around Miss Miki would have been taken by Madoka before she could have gone full Oktavia anyways, now that Homura thought about it. Or had that been what had happened? 

“I’m not sure the one wasn’t a response to the other,” Miss Tomoe said quietly, bailing Homura out. Ugh. Did Homura actually have to thank her for something, even in private? Homura had tried to avoid that ever since the first time she’d lost it, let alone the others. 

“She threw herself into being a magical girl after that,” Miss Tomoe continued, “and she seemed awfully reckless in her approach when she did so.” 

“Yeah, that,” Homura lied. 

“Eh…” Kyoko muttered uncertainly. 

“What’s all this back there?” Satoko asked loudly from in front as she turned around to face them. 

“You’ll understand when you get older,” Rika said from beside her, somehow still audible despite facing away, as she put her arm on Satoko’s shoulder. 

It took a second for Homura’s brain to process that, 

Wait, Rika had been listening? 

Hopefully Kyoko hadn’t noticed, that could get embarrassing. 

The three of them fell into an uncomfortable silence after that; the chatter between Satoko and Rika ahead of them and the sounds of the surrounding village were the only things breaking the silence. Homura could feel herself starting to tense up, and tried and failed to tamp it down. She knew why she was feeling this way, at one level it made sense but at another level it just wasn’t rational, it was just bad past experiences that didn’t have any bearing on the presence— 

“Ah, there we are sirs,” Rika’s voice called out from in front of them, pointing at a building that had just become visible as they had slowly rounded a bend in the road. 

The building was… Homura didn’t quite know how to explain it. It wouldn’t have stood out in what she’d seen of Tokyo back when she was there, just another concrete facade. In Mitakihara it would have, but that made sense. Most of Mitakihara was new and had been built to look futuristic besides; the clinic looked horribly outdated by comparison. Which made sense, seeing as this town was apparently literally several decades in the past. In comparison to the rest of the village, though? The clinic still stood out, but for different reasons. Most of that was just the construction; the style looked horribly dated to Homura’s eyes, but almost all of the rest of the village buildings, with the exception of Keiichi’s family’s house, were of even older styles. Even the government buildings like the borrowed one the school used didn’t look like this. Well, most of them. There was a single kind-of exception. Considering that said exception was the remains of the dam site, including the small office that had been built to administer it, that almost made this building stand out even more. Moreover, it was too big! There were taller buildings in town, but that was a function of the old steep roofs; the only buildings in town with a bigger footprint were the Sonozaki and Kimiyoshi mansions. Then again, it was built like an office complex; presumably the clinic was sharing the building with a couple of other local businesses. 

The five of them turned the corner and started to head towards the door. Homura still wasn’t really happy about agreeing to make this trip, if she was honest with herself. Partially that was because she was worried about whether Kyoko, Miss Tomoe, and herself would somehow be clearly not normal to the testing. It was a foolish worry, she knew – she’d woken up in the hospital at the start of each new timeline, after all, and neither they nor the nurse back at Mitakihara Junior High had ever noticed any visible differences now that Homura was a magical girl. But the worry still came – maybe they’d known what they were supposed to see and saw it instead of what was actually there, after all, and if so a new doctor might not have such preconceptions. But really, it was the other part of it that was the bigger one: Homura was supposed to be done with this now. Done with the constant medical problems. Done with spending all of her time in a doctor’s office. Done with not being able to participate in PE. Done with those stupid glasses. And yet, once again, she was headed into a medical facility to see a doctor. 

The outer doors of the clinic slid open and the five of them headed inside. There it was, that mixed feeling of dread and familiarity. Used to be it had been mostly dread, Homura reflected, but after enough time the sterile surroundings of a hospital just started to feel, well, normal. This wasn’t quite the same, but close enough. The smell in particular was exactly what Homura was used to, that sterile hint of bleach. 

The five of them headed up to the front desk. Rika and Satoko just signed in; Homura, like Kyoko and Miss Tomoe, needed to explain their visit. 

“We are visitors to town and were told that we should come by for a checkup?” Homura told her uncertainly; it was autopilot, she realized, that had led her to say something before Miss Tomoe could have. 

“Visitors?” the man at the desk asked quizzically. After a moment he spoke back up again. “Oh, right, I remember Dr. Irie saying something to that effect.” 

“As I recall he said that you would have an appointment set up for us at the same time as these two girls’ scheduled appointment?” Miss Tomoe prompted. 

“Did he?” the desk man answered. “Let me check… ah! Here we are! Okay, you’ll need to fill out these two sheets of paperwork while you wait with the other two and we get everything ready.” 

They retreated to the benches and started filling out the paperwork. There was a hiccup there that was, Homura realized, obvious with even a little foresight, which meant it said something that none of them had thought of the problem ahead of time. Namely: How was Kyoko supposed to fill out the forms, particularly where her address was involved? She’d fallen through the cracks, partially by her own doing and partially not, but at any rate she didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention. Of course, there was the broader issue for all three of them, too: none of them were going to be in the broader system, seeing as right now none of them would be born for at least another decade. In the end, Miss Tomoe resolved the question by recommending Kyoko tell most of the truth: her family’s residence had burned down and they weren’t sure when they would be able to rebuild, should she use her original address or the place she was currently staying? The desk clerk answered the latter, and Kyoko used Homura’s residence over Mami’s. 

Eventually the clerk called their names for the next appointment – it had taken a moment for them to prepare, they had been the only people in the waiting room for at least ten minutes – and they got up. “Miss Furude and Miss Hojo here know where to go, just follow them,” the clerk said, and they started to turn down the halls. 

After the third turn into a new hall, Homura started to wonder. 

“How large is this facility?” she asked Rika and Satoko, curious. “Surely there is at least one other tenant in the building.” 

“No, the clinic takes up the entire building, sir,” Rika replied cheerfully. 

“Really?” Homura said, surprised. “It seems awfully large for such a small village, then.” 

“Everyone says that,” Satoko laughed. 

“Sounds like some legislator’s pork-barrel spending,” Miss Tomoe said thoughtfully. 

Homura was about to reply to that when she thought better of it and clamped her mouth shut. Yes, there was an even more obvious reason why a big piece of construction work might have gone through, given the open secret about one of the local Great Families’ line of work. No, that didn’t make it a good idea to go and start talking about the Yakuza bribing people to get a construction contract in the building said bribes would have resulted in. 

Although… something wasn’t quite adding up here. 

“The clinic has to be quite new, then?” Homura asked, sure that it was the right question but not why. 

“Reasonably so, yes,” Rika confirmed. 

“It opened about six years ago,” Satoko agreed. 

Wait a minute… the article Homura had been reading a couple of days ago and the reading she’d done in the library to confirm… 

“They were building the clinic while the Dam War was still going on?” she asked, curious. 

“~Mii,” Rika replied after a moment. “I don’t really get it either, sir” 

“Probably the two bureaucracies just never actually got around to communicating,” Homura muttered darkly. 

They turned around yet another corner. Wait. How big was this place, really? This was more convoluted than half of the times when Homura had been shuttled through various rooms back at the hospital, and that place had been at least half a dozen stories tall. This place was only two. And just how many right turns had they made, now? It was like this place was a maze. 

Also, it was like there was no-one in it. Well, no, not no one. Homura had seen one other person besides the desk clerk, back after the second turn. And there were two more, up ahead. Hmm. More grey-uniformed janitors, just like the last batch. That was actually starting to get to her. Where were the doctors and nurses? She’d been wheeled through the hospital to testing rooms and the like enough times to be used to the sight of men in lab coats and women in scrubs rushing up and down the hall past her. Where were they here? 

They took yet another turn, and then another shortly thereafter. What was this place, a freaking labyrinth? Homura was more and more uneasy, and by now she was sure it wasn’t just anxiety at an impending medical procedure. Heh. That was actually kind of funny in a way, wasn’t it? There had been a time not that long ago when she wouldn’t have been able to place what she was feeling, but then she’d been stuck bored in the hospital with nothing better to do and so she’d puzzled it out. Okay, so the worry about how her heart could give out on her at any moment had also been part of it. Anyhow. 

They rounded one more corner and finally, finally could see the end of their journey – a small examination room, older-looking in both design and equipment but still recognizable. Honestly, now that Homura thought about it the room almost looked like the nurse’s office had at that damn boarding school. She silently repressed the thought. It wasn’t this clinic's fault that it had been built around the same time that damn school had last had its infirmary updated. 

(Although, now that Homura thought about it... maybe there was more of a connection than she had first thought. The infirmary had been rebuilt after the Girl Who Got Away, hadn't it?) 

”Ah, you made it!” Dr. Irie waved. “This is my assistant, Nurse Takano. Have a seat outside, Satoko – excuse me, Miss Hojo here needs to take her test first.” 

Homura had expected some sort of fancy medical equipment, so was quite surprised when the nurse – Takano, was it? – took out a set of pictures and diagrams and started asking Satoko about them. Especially when the first question was about whether a picture was of broccoli or cauliflower. 

“Broccoli or cauliflower?” she asked Rika softly after a moment, her confusion overcoming reserve and probably politeness. 

“There’s a couple of things that Dr. Irie tests Satoko on, sir,” Rika explained quietly from beside Homura. “Most of them are to make sure the vitamin study Satoko is participating in doesn’t interfere with her development, but a couple of things have to do with other issues. In this particular case, well… can I trust you to not talk about this outside the club?” 

Homura agreed with a gesture. 

“Satoko’s colorblind,” Rika continued. 

Oh, of course. That made sense. 

“—And so she can only distinguish between the two vegetables by shape instead of by color,” Homura filled in before Rika could continue. 

“Exactly,” Rika agreed. 

“Okay, now I am curious – fully colorblind or is it only certain colors?” Homura asked. “Red-green is the most common form, but that cannot be the case here because it would still be reasonably easy to distinguish between green and white. Actually, I suppose Satoko has to be just about completely colorblind given that…” 

“She’s fully colorblind,” Rika confirmed. “I’m surprised; you seem to know a decent amount about the subject, sir.” 

“I got really bored when I was stuck in the hospital,” Homura explained, “so the doctors let me read various pamphlets and other things they had laying around. Some of them were on colorblindness – as I recall one of the doctors was working with a couple of colorblind patients.” 

Oh. 

_Oh._

_That_ was what Satoko’s appearance reminded Homura of. 

One of that doctor’s patients had been albino. 

Of course it was the colorblindness that had reminded her of it, that was one of the usual effects of the disorder besides the most obvious one. That and the red eyes. Satoko clearly wasn’t albino herself – Satoko’s hair was still blond as opposed to the vaguely bluish white of that boy, and she could actually head outside in the sun without endangering herself – but it was close enough; that initial discomfort she had felt was because Satoko’s appearance had reminded Homura of her years of boredom. 

“Alright, all done!” Dr. Irie said cheerfully after a while as Satoko finally got up and Nurse Takano packed up the last of the various sheets. “Here we go, a week’s supply of your vitamin supplement.” 

He took out a set of metallic containers and placed them into a cooler, closed the cooler up, then took out one more container and opened it, revealing a syringe. (A syringe? For a vitamin supplement? Odd.) 

“Do you want to handle this dose yourself, Satoko, or would you like me to do it?” Dr. Irie asked Satoko. 

“Ah, I think I can handle it myself just fine,” Satoko replied, and then proceeded to find a vein and inject herself with it. 

“Okay, so,” Dr. Irie. “Let me get set up for you three girls here. Nurse Takano?” 

“I’ve already got things mostly set up,” the nurse said, then paused for a moment. “Oh, but don’t forget the paperwork!” 

“Right, right,” Dr. Irie agreed. “It should be right… wait, wasn’t it here in the desk?” 

“Check the office,” Nurse Takano said after pausing to think. “I thought I saw them when I checked in with you over lunch.” 

As Dr. Irie headed out of the room, Nurse Takano turned to face Homura and the other two magical girls while reaching into her desk and pulling something out. 

“So, while the good doctor is doing that, I suppose I should ask now – I hear you girls are interested in the history of Hinamizawa?” she asked. 

“What makes you say that?” Kyoko asked. 

“Rumor says that you’ve headed in to visit Okinomiya on multiple occasions now, and most of your trips have involved visits to the local history section of the library,” the nurse explained. 

Wait, really? That didn't feel like a good thing to Homura... 

“Yes, I suppose it’s true,” Miss Tomoe spoke up after a second. “Why do you ask?” 

“Well, you see,” Nurse Takano explained, “I have something of a passing interest in these matters myself. It’s something of a hobby for me, really.” 

Wait a minute… had Homura seen the nurse before? That blond hair looked vaguely familiar. 

“And, well, I take notes.” 

The nurse produced several slim volumes. 

“These notes, to be precise. My notebooks. I have a fair number of them on various subjects, but, well, I heard about you girls and thought these were the ones most likely to be relevant to your interests. Would you like to borrow them?” the nurse asked. 

After a moment of looking at each other, the three of them agreed and Miss Tomoe reached out to take them from the older lady. 

As Miss Tomoe placed the notebooks into her purse, Homura noticed Rika stand up and head over from where she had been seated with Satoko and walk over to Takano’s desk. 

“Since you’ve got them out anyways… would you happen to have any notebooks on the Sinner’s Procession, sir?” Rika asked the nurse – quietly, but Homura could still hear her. “Especially its history?” 

“The Sinner’s Procession?” Takano asked, almost surprised. “I figured you would know that one – the first Sinner in the procession was Ouka Furude herself. It is said she insisted on a ritual mock execution after sealing the Onigari-no-Ryou in your family’s shrine, that it was necessary to appease Oyashiro-sama and the rest of the gods for sealing away a sacred weapon such as that.” 

“… Yes, sir” Rika said after a moment. “But taking the role of the Sinner is no longer expected of the Furude head, sir. They haven’t even held the procession for a couple of years for lack of anyone suitable to play the Sinner.” 

“This much is true,” Takano agreed. “There were… accidents. It’s not talked about much, but as I understand it these days being named as the Sinner is widely viewed as an informal punishment for one who has broken certain rules like some of the village taboos. It’s not the only qualification, mind you. Otherwise, well, they never tried to force either of Satoko’s parents to play the part of the Sinner. I’m not sure why, actually. It may be that Oryou Sonozaki put her foot down because she didn’t want to have to see them, it may have been that they were viewed as too far out of line to be censured that way and their ostracism was viewed as making them ineligible. I dimly suspect, though, that part of the problem was that neither of them looked right for the part, what with their hair and eyes.” 

“I suppose that makes sense,” Rika smiled. 

“There is one other theory I have,” Nurse Takano said, slowly. “I could tell you, but I think you would then be supposed to kill me.” 

Rika chuckled at that. “You know full well I’m no hardliner.” She paused for a moment. “But seriously, no, if I was going to take offense at your research I would have done so long ago, sir.” 

“This is speculation on my part, mind,” the nurse continued at that – and was it Homura’s imagination or was she talking slightly louder now? “It is possible that the founding of your house is… obfuscated. I’ve run across a couple of documents that seem to reference a house founder who was not Ouka Furude – interestingly, including several documents in the files your parents once let me look at. The exact nature of the complication varies depending on the telling. The most interesting, though… it seemed to claim that the true founder of your house was in fact the demon, and that Ouka murdered her own mother at said mother’s behest before sealing away the symbol of her matricide and striking the deed from all records. It is poorly attested. On the other hand… it has struck me before that if Ouka Furude did commit such a sin then it would explain why she insisted on such an execution, yes?” 

An uncertain “Mii?” was all that Rika seemed to be able to say in response to that. 

“Mind you, some things about that procession baffle even me either way,” Nurse Takano continued lightly as she pulled out one more notebook and gave it to Rika. “I never have managed to figure out what that effigy represents, for instance. The records insist that it is supposed to be a representation of a demon, but it’s like no demon I’ve ever heard of.” She paused. “Why do you ask, anyways?” 

“They’re planning on holding the procession this year, sir.” Rika explained. 

“Really? I hadn’t heard about that. That would make it, what, the second time it’s been held since I’ve come here?” Nurse Takano said thoughtfully. “It’s a pity I’ll probably be busy that night, I would like to see it again. I’m surprised, though. They found a lead?” 

“They think they have a candidate, sir,” Rika elaborated. 

Takano looked around, then over the room, then back at the girl she was speaking with. “Interesting. If you’re implying what I think you are… maybe the hardliners are having their say after all?” 

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say, sir.” Rika told her. 

Further discussion was interrupted by the return of Dr. Irie, now carrying several sheets of paper and a few cases similar to the ones he had given to Satoko earlier. 

“Right. Miss Tomoe, if we could see you now please?” he called out. 

Homura was the last of the three to be called in, to her annoyance. It gave her more time to get anxious about a pending medical procedure. It was unnecessary, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. As her conscious mind expected, when the doctor and nurse finally got around to calling her in she found that the worrying was pointless. It was an ordinary physical, in most respects. She’d had exams like that on many occasions. The one thing that was slightly unusual was that Takano drew some of her blood, but it wasn’t like needles were anything new after she’d dealt with IVs for literal years. (Takano praised her for her stoicism, apparently in contrast to both of the other two. Kyoko, okay, yeah. Miss Tomoe? Homura was inclined to hold that one over her.) Not that she was completely unworried, but with neither nurse nor doctor showing any sign of surprise if that was coming it would wait for the blood test results. 

When they were finally finished, Dr. Irie called all three of them back into the office. 

“There’s one thing we like to do for visitors who are going to be making an extended stay here in Hinamizawa,” Dr. Irie said, pulling out something from another cooler. “There’s a particular strain of Japanese encephalitis that’s endemic to the area, so we recommend a booster shot of the vaccine just to make sure you’re protected. Is that okay?” 

Homura agreed, then Miss Tomoe, then Kyoko, and so Takano took out the syringes. Homura went first, probably because she’d pulled back her sleeve on autopilot almost immediately after hearing the word “shot”. Honestly, she was too used to needles. Maybe not this one, though. The shot felt… odd, somehow. Then again, usually when Homura had been injected before it had usually been for an IV drip so maybe that was it? 

“There we go, all done,” Dr. Irie said with a clap as Kyoko got up ruefully. “You girls have a nice stay here, okay? It’s a nice town.” 

“Most of the time, anyways,” Nurse Takano added with a soft chuckle; regrettably, the older woman seemed to be cursed with one of nature’s natural evil laughs, so the effect was far more sinister than it had presumably been intended to be. Takano paused for a moment before continuing. “Frankly, I prefer the summer heat to some of the slushier weather we get in the winter, but I’ll admit I don’t mind working in one of the buildings in town with air conditioning!” 

“This is true,” Dr. Irie agreed. “Well, off you girls go; I don’t have another appointment after this per se, but in this line of work it’s always good to be prepared for the unexpected.” 

They filed out and started navigating the mazelike corridors back to the entrance, still accompanied only by the occasional apparition of the grey-suited janitors. The effect was starting to unsettle Homura. It seemed darkly familiar, somehow, but she couldn’t quite place it and Homura felt like she should have been able to. It wasn’t like she’d ever been here before, so it had to be something of kind. It wasn’t all the years at that hospital, either. Then what— 

“This place is too big!” Kyoko complained from between Homura and Miss Tomoe. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear I could walk around the building faster than we can go throught it. How do you girls handle it?” 

“Eh, it’s a little confusing at first but it’s no big deal once you learn where everything is,” Satoko chortled. 

“Admittedly it helps to have someone who loves to plot out the interiors of buildings and where people go in them, though, sirs,” Rika added. “The better to set up pranks, you know.” 

“They are not pranks they are traps!” Satoko responded indignantly, and the two younger girls devolved into a back-and-forth argument. 

“She’s teasing you, you know,” Miss Tomoe said to Satoko after a minute. “Also, I believe that is the front desk.” 

That brought about a brief return of silence so as not to disturb the desk clerk as they headed out the door. And back into the summer heat. Whoof. After the better part of a week doing without Homura had started to forget just how much better things were with air conditioning. 

“Y’know,” Satoko said from in front of them, clearly speaking to Rika, as they turned the corner towards the center of town, “what is that effigy you were talking about with Takano earlier? I can’t remember half of the Sinner’s Procession, it’s been too long.” 

“I’d have forgotten about it myself if I hadn’t seen it yesterday and Nurse Takano hadn’t brought it up, sir,” Rika replied. “It’s a weird little thing. It’s supposed to be a white rat but it doesn’t really look like it, it’s more like a white cat with red eyes and a ridiculously long ears and tail. Also they usually put these little hooplike things around the ears.” 

Homura stopped cold in her tracks. 

From a cursory glance to her left, she wasn’t the only one. 

Homura, Kyoko, and Miss Tomoe very quietly shared a look as Rika and Satoko got further ahead of them, and Homura suspected she wasn’t the only one who suddenly had a single question running through her head. 

Namely: If that was representing what it sure sounded like it was, then what the _fuck_ was a fucking Incubator doing represented in a mountain village’s summer festival? 

Rika quietly closed the notebook and sat, lost in thought. 

There had been two of the notebooks, in fact. By the looks of things one had gotten stuck onto the other and Takano hadn’t noticed. 

The one on the history of the Sinner’s Procession had mostly restated what Takano had already told her – that procession had been started by the founder of their house and initially considered an honor for the person selected as Sinner. It had changed over time, apparently after several incidents, until eventually it had been used as a de facto punishment for people perceived to have stepped too far out of line. There were also Takano’s notes about what she could tell of the selection criteria, but there really hadn’t been much in them that Takano hadn’t told Rika herself earlier – quite a bit of it had been Takano’s thought process about why she thought Satoko’s parents had never been chosen as Sinner. There were, however, a few citations. Takano had apparently tracked down a few older notes indicating that there had at least once been a preferred appearance for a Sinner, presumably dating back to Ouka herself: slim, with long bluish-black hair in the princess cut. It wasn’t quite a match for Homura – her hair was slightly darker than Rika’s, and the style was slightly different – but it would explain why people were suggesting that Homura play the part. 

Except for the part where Homura had done nothing wrong, that is. 

Maybe they’d somehow just forgotten that? Apparently the Procession had been skipped as often as not since at least the Meiji era. 

The other notebook had been even more interesting. It concerned the Onigari-no-Ryou, that legendary demon-sealing sword, but the most interesting part of it had been a quote from one of her ancestors. Most of it had covered ground that Takano herself had covered when Rika had talked to her at the clinic, but one bit had stuck out – a reference to Ouka breaking off the demon’s horn. 

The resemblance to that chunk out of one of Hanyuu’s horns was impossible to miss. 

But for all that what she had read had been interesting, she wasn’t sure it actually mattered. 

There was still something nagging at her, and this had done nothing to assuage it. 

Maybe it was the newcomers. Maybe it was the dream she barely remembered and yet still couldn’t get out of her head. Definitely it was the way Watanagashi seemed to be changing, and yet Rika suspected that was quite secondary somehow. 

Or maybe, now that she thought about it… 

Ah, maybe that was it. 

Rika was very used to one thing not adding up in Hinamizawa, namely whatever kept killing her over and over. It had been over a hundred years spread across fragments and she still hadn’t figured out who was doing it. A second thing not adding up? That was new. Doubly so when it was calling everything else she knew into question. 

But she didn’t have enough here to work with. 

Where else could she look? 

Well, there was the obvious possibility. Takano had written these notebooks after looking at the family archives, no reason Rika couldn’t do the same. 

Well, except the part where her parents had died before she was old enough for them to tell her where the archives were. 

Which wasn’t to say she had no idea where they were; the archives were either going to be under the shrine proper or in her ancestral home adjacent to it. The latter, if she had to guess. Technically she was allowed in there, since she was the head of her clan if for no other reason than there was nobody else left. The problem was that technically she also wasn’t allowed in there – she simply wasn’t old enough, at least in body, and hadn’t received the proper training yet besides. A couple of caretakers had been chosen to clean the house every so often, with the threat of Godmother Oryou breathing down their necks as insurance in case personal ethics and the Oyashiro-sama’s displeasure weren’t enough to keep them on the straight and narrow. But, of course, the other side of that was that there was nobody except the caretakers actually keeping an eye on the place. Why would they need to when anyone trying to burglarize the house would risk both Oyashiro-sama’s and Godmother Oryou’s displeasure? But then, Rika had no reason to fear Oyashiro-sama’s wrath, and even if she got caught Godmother Oryou had a soft spot for her. Which just left the housekeepers. They would be paying closer attention at this time of year, but Rika had some experience sneaking around the house while dodging the watchful eyes of authority figures. 

She made up her mind and headed out to look. 

Or started to, at least. She made it halfway up the path to the shrine before she was interrupted by a sight at once familiar and unexpected. 

Hanyuu was there, perched on a stone next to the path Rika was taking. She looked up and smiled wanly, then gestured for Rika to take a seat beside her. 

Rika did so. 

“Going somewhere?” Hanyuu asked Rika. 

“Yes and no,” Rika replied. “It can wait, sir.” 

They sat in silence for a minute. 

“Did you want to talk to me about something, sir?” Rika asked finally. 

“I’m… just worried,” Hanyuu replied after a moment. “You’re not usually this anxious this time of year. And I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen you ask to see one of Takano’s notebooks before.” 

Well, Rika admitted to herself, she had a point. On the first one, at least. On the other hand, Hanyuu knew better than that? Of course Rika wasn’t usually anxious, because that had been burned out of her after a hundred years’ worth of repeating this godsforsaken month over and over! She was anxious now because for the first time in a hundred fragments something new had happened and it was starting to look like something bad was going to happen to the new girls, too! 

“You know she changes her story each time, right?” Hanyuu said suddenly. 

“She, sir?” Rika asked, confused. 

“Nurse Takano,” Hanyuu explained. “Were you there when she told Satoko that Oyashiro-sama came from sea creatures?” 

“Yeah,” Rika admitted. “I figured her research was just wrong in that case.” 

“I have my doubts,” Hanyuu said. “I’ve seen her a couple of other times when it was just me watching her. When she talks to Rena she explains how Oyashiro-sama and the Hinamizawa Syndrome were the result of an alien invasion. I’m pretty sure I remember her talking about Onigafuchi Swamp on the occasions she’s given notebooks to Keiichi. And, well, there’s the talk about parasites you’re familiar with.” 

“And?” Rika asked her. Something about what Hanyuu had just said was pinging her, but she couldn’t place it… 

“I don’t think she really cares all that much about what the truth is,” Hanyuu explained. “And I certainly wouldn’t trust one of her notebooks. That never ends well. Especially when she gives them to Rena, you know how those fragments go.” 

Rika's oldest friend patted her on the arm spectrally. 

“I don’t want you to get hurt again,” Hanyuu continued. “Just let it go.” 

Rika looked up at her oldest friend and mentor. 

It took an effort not to get up and run away screaming, let alone manage to sit calmly like she did. 

Once again, where Hanyuu should have been Rika was seeing a weird figure made of fragments, gazing at her with an air of menace. No, not menace. Something else. Not hostile, but still unsettling. 

After a moment she excused herself. 

She pretended to be heading down the hill, but after a moment snuck back up the hill, now well-off to the side. Hanyuu didn’t seem to notice, at least. Rika had covered her eyes and relied on her muscle memory to guide her – this wasn’t a place where Satoko would ever set traps – but she had been worried that the lack of vision would itself be a sign. 

What was Hanyuu doing now, anyways? 

Rika chanced a look back down the hil. 

Hanyuu was still where she had been, on the rock down the hill. She looked normal again now… except was she crying? She was, wasn’t she? She had been the last time she’d seemed to become angular, too, now that Rika thought about it. 

Hopefully that plus the sense link was all that was going on. Hopefully. 

Rika crested the hill and took advantage of her eternally damnably young body to climb a tree. Getting into the shrine was not too difficult. There were a couple of spots where nobody would be paying particularly close attention, especially when you had carefully landed on the roof to avoid notice. 

But… where would the archives be? 

After a moment’s thought, Rika crossed over from the roof of the shrine to the roof of her family’s residence, dropped down a bit, and pried open a window. It was child’s play to slip inside, landing lightly on familiar floors as she closed the window behind her. 

Hmm. The first place to check was probably that one room that her father had effectively kept as his own, the one Rika had never been allowed into. The second place was probably that one room that had effectively been her mother's... 

Rika looked up and paused, realizing that she didn't quite recognize where her feet had taken her. 

WWait, where had she gotten herself to now? 

Rika looked up at her surroundings. Ah. Apparently she had been absent-minded enough to head back into the shrine proper, and the main room of it no less. She knew that room well. She’d never really been able to forgive it, after enough fragments with that one accident with Satoko that had led to Rika getting spanked. The damage was still visible – Satoko had damaged the arm of the main statue of Oyashiro-sama, inaccurate as the depiction was. 

Rika thought about one of the notebooks, the one she suspected Takano had not meant to give her, and quaked with laughter she barely managed to keep silent. That ancient ancestor had been right, hadn’t they? The demon had come out and the statue had crumbled, or started to. And it had been done by the daughter of the Hojos to boot. 

Rika cleared her head. As funny as that was, that still didn’t help her find wherever the old archives that Takano had looked at were. It wasn’t like she was going to find anything like that in here. 

She crept back to the side of the room through the large jars that had been placed around its edges, her breath catching as one particular footfall came with an unusually loud “thunk”, and started to head back out the door. 

Then her brain caught up with her. 

Why had that footfall made an unusually loud sound, anyways? 

She backtracked a few jars to where she thought she had heard the noise and looked around. No, nothing particularly unusual. She turned and started to head out again. 

Thunk. 

She glanced down at the floor. That was weird. It was hard to see in the early evening lighting, but it looked ever so slightly different from the rest of the floor, didn’t it? And the difference went under one of the jars. 

Slowly and with great effort, Rika moved the jar in question. It was difficult, trying to move something that would have taken effort for her damnably young body to move even if she wasn’t worrying about being heard, but despite the jar catching a couple of times she eventually managed. Thankfully the thing had been empty. She glanced down on the floor again, trying to figure out what the jar had caught on. Ah, that was it, some kind of ring design in the floor. 

Rika bent down to feel it, and was startled when part of the ring pulled up off the floor in her hand. She tried pulling it free, but nothing happened except more creaking. 

Well, that was weird. Rika moved around to the other side to take another look, and gave it one more experimental pull. 

It pulled up off the ground this time, with a section of the floor following it. 

Oh. 

Oh dear. 

It was a trapdoor! 

Rika peered down into the depths, cursing that she hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight. Except… there was light down there? How was there light down there? There were no windows that she could see and the sun was at a bad angle. Electric lights, maybe? 

Regardless, there was a ladder reaching down to the floor. 

Rika took it. 

At the bottom, she could see a spiral of steps leading down. 

Well, she’d come this far. Why not? 

She spiraled down. Ah, that was how this place was being lit. There were torches on the wall. But… how would they have remained lit this long? Rika stood on tip-toe and waved her hand near one of them. Weird. She didn’t feel any sign of heat. 

Rika came to the bottom of the stairs and turned to look at the room beyond it. It took an effort for her not to gasp in shock. What she was looking at was… different. There was wood in the old style, but no fabric panels. Instead, the space between the wooden beams, along with most of the surface of the floor and the ceiling, was filled with some kind of weird artwork Rika had never seen before, tiles arranged to form pictures. The effect was almost like looking down at the village the way you could from the steps or railing outside. Almost. The buildings looked wrong – they were too few, too small, and in the wrong places. Presumably the scene had been made to resemble the Hinamizawa of whenever this room had been built? But that didn’t explain the bits that looked like flames, or how some of the buildings looked almost more like ruins, did it? There was also a ring of columns inside, tall white things quite unlike the sides of a torii. They had been carved with designs; somehow the effect was strangely reminiscent of what Rika could see when Hanyuu pulled her through the space between fragments. 

And in the center of it all there was a simple stone figure. 

It almost looked like a komainu, though the shape was wrong – simultaneously too cat-like and too distorted to be a proper shrine guardian. The head was a triangular thing, not the usual lion-dog, and the stance was wrong even though the legs were the right shape. There was also something off about the back, too, something Rika couldn’t quite figure out and wasn’t sure she could have described even if she had. Something besides the handful of bright spots she could see there. It was strange to look at, almost like something pieced together instead of a coherent design. 

Rika headed towards the left side of the room to get a better angle. When she looked back at the thing, she took a double take. 

It was almost like the thing had tilted its head to follow her movement! 

But that was impossible. 

Right? 

Rika moved to the right side of the room. 

The head still seemed to be looking at her. 

It was weird, Rika reflected as she headed back towards the left side of the room again, carefully watching the thing as she did so. At no point did she notice any movement of the head. And yet, it had to have been following her movement, because the angle she was looking at its head hadn’t changed despite crossing from one part of the room to the other… 

Rika headed back to the entrance and thought. She didn’t really trust the situation. And yet… she didn’t have a choice, did she? The old records she was looking for were on the other side of the room. Either she braved the thing or she turned back around and went home. 

Was it worth it? 

Rika had to think for a minute about that. 

Yes, she finally decided, and took an uncertain step forward. 

Whereupon she promptly jumped back, startled, as the statue started to move with an aura of menace. 

Oh great. 

However… it wasn’t following her? 

It was like it had frozen once she backed away. 

Hmm. 

Rika experimentally put a foot forward, stepping past the point where the normal floor gave way to the little colored pieces of the tableau. 

The beast started to move. 

Rika pulled her toe back. 

It stopped. 

She tested it again, and got the same results. 

Well, that made sense, at least. The thing only moved when Rika put her feet on the floor art… oh, right, mosaic! That was the word for this kind of thing, Rika remembered reading it in a book once. 

Still, that didn’t really help her, did it? She still had to get past the creature if she was going to get to what she wanted. 

Rika looked around, hoping to see something, anything that she could use to help herself here. 

Her eyes lit upon an old mop, standing in the corner of the room. 

Well. 

It would have to do. 

Rika grabbed the mop, took three deep breaths at the edge of the tiles, and started to run over the mosaic towards the other side. 

The statue moved, repeatedly now. Its movement was weird, Rika could see. Jerky. Almost like a moving picture show, the old-fashioned kind that had predated things like television. The effect was unnatural. 

Rika held out her mop to try to fend the creature off as she tried to run past it and get to the other side. 

She couldn’t. 

She couldn’t? 

She couldn’t. Either her body was refusing to run away from the statue, or the space was somehow twisting to force her to run towards the thing. 

Well, nothing for it then. 

Rika swept out with the mop, and started to wonder whether she would be better off turning back after all. She really didn’t know what she was doing, did she? She’d done stuff like this in a couple of fragments, but that was usually desperation when either Shion or Rena succumbed to the Syndrome. And yet. She took a step forward, then another, and headed for the statue, mop in hand. 

The statue pounced forward and swept out with its forearm, trying to block her swing and trip her. 

To Rika’s astonishment, she lightly jumped over the statue, hooked her mop around the guardian and lightly touched it on one of its surface marks, which promptly winked out. 

Had she done that? 

How had she done that? 

It hadn’t been intentional, or anything conscious on her part. It had just been… muscle memory? Reflex? But that made no sense! That had been like a martial arts move, and Rika had never done anything like that… 

She tried to dance to the other side of the statue, and was startled to find herself pirouetting when she landed on a foot, followed by pushing off of that foot and swinging her mop to hit another one of the spots, which winked out in turn. 

How was she doing this? 

A third dart, and this time Rika slid under the statue and landed a bop with the mop on a spot on the underside of its belly. 

A fourth, and Rika touched the forehead before quickly jerking back. 

A fifth, and Rika somehow leaped over the thing – somersaulted, even – and lightly touched one final spot on the top of the statue’s back, whereupon the statue froze in place. Rika landed, and then turned back to take a closer look. 

All that was there was… some weird kind of table? The legs and feet of it were sculpted much like the guardian statue’s had been; the top of it seemed to be cushioned. A long board rose up from one of its long sides, again thinly cushioned on the side facing inward, and one of the short ends arced up into a sculpted thing that looked rather like the head of the guardian beast had. It almost looked like something you could sit and lay on, or even sleep on like a futon. 

On it, she noticed, was a bottle. It almost looked like the bottle she kept well-hidden in one of the cabinets, the one Satoko didn’t need to find and that Hanyuu dearly wished Rika would get rid of. 

She took a closer look at the bottle. 

No, it was that bottle, or more likely another one like it. There was the label on it, clear as day – Bernkastel wine. 

Experimentally, Rika pulled the cork and tried to see if there was anything in it. No. Empty. 

But… what was it doing here at all? 

Why would this modern bottle of wine be in a room that nobody had been in probably for years? 

And why had she thought this piece of furniture had been some kind of guardian beast? 

... She was hallucinating after all, wasn’t she? 

Rika thought about it for a moment, thought about turning her back and washing her hands of this again. It would be… safer. Yes. 

Then she thought about the poor newcomers and the rest of what was going on. 

She had come all this way. Did she really want to go home empty-handed? 

But could she even trust what she read while she was here? 

Rika hung on the precipice of decision for a moment. Did she really want to go through with this? 

Yes, she decided finally. 

Rika gritted her teeth and headed through the door into the next room. 

She had expected some dusty archive full of old papers and scrolls. What she was looking at, instead, looked almost like a theater stage? And a really old one, at that. It was mostly wood panels, but there were a couple of decorations on the walls – and, in one corner, seven long objects that looked like some kind of stake, incongruous both in their appearance and in how much newer they looked than the rest of what was in this room. 

In one of the far corners, Rika saw, there was a stack of boxes. 

She headed over and opened one up. 

There was, in fact, a pile of scrolls inside. 

She took one out carefully and reverently opened it – perhaps with more caution than she had needed, it seemed in surprisingly good shape for something who-knows-how-old. 

She had expected old records and papers with proper old-fashioned calligraphy. 

What she found instead was, to her eyes, far weirder. 

They were pictures, drawings, and not well-practiced ones. The styles seemed to vary; some looked recent, others quite old. Some were better-made than others, too – they ranged from mere stick figures to passable prints and sketches. All of them, however, looked somehow unpracticed. They reminded her of childrens’ drawings, really, like the ones Rika herself had made when she was younger. 

They also, Rika noticed as she pulled more of them out in the diffuse light, had a common theme. They all seemed to be girls in costumes, usually dresses – strangely, despite how old some of these drawings had to be very few of them seemed to be wearing traditional village attire. Most of them also seemed to be holding some sort of weapon or tool. And all of them seemed to have some kind of strange figure with other smaller figures around it offset in such a way as to suggest it was supposed to be in the background, though the figure in question always differed between the prints. 

It was fascinating, in a way. And also unproductive. Rika hadn’t found the old archives after all. (Although, then… why were these here in the first place.) It was getting late, too – she needed to head back, and could maybe check one or two more rooms before she needed to get back home. 

Rika put the scrolls back and started to leave. But before she could do so, one of the scrolls she hadn’t looked at popped out of the last box; it had to have been knocked loose when Rika had put the others back in, despite her carefulness. She picked it up and started to put it back. Then she decided to look at it first, because why not? 

She opened it, and very nearly dropped it. 

It was quite reminiscent of her own drawings, like the ones her mother had put up on the main residence’s fridge when she was younger – though this picture looked far better done than anything Rika had ever made at that age. Which was bizarre, considering that it also looked older than every other scroll Rika had looked at so far. But it was what the girl in the picture was wearing that shook her more than anything else: she was wearing a headdress and something resembling a miko’s hakama, and carrying a black scythe. 

The same outfit Rika had been wearing in that dream, she was sure of it. 

Rika glanced at the figure in the upper-right of the drawing – unusually human compared to most of the other ones she’d seen, differing mostly in the dress, although there was a second figure associated with it… and now that Rika thought about it that other figure looked a lot like the guardian beast she had seen outside, hadn’t she? Strange. 

She put it back, carefully, and closed the lid, then headed out back through the mosaic room, up the stairs and ladder, and out to check a couple of other rooms before going home. 

It struck her, as she did so, that there was one other aspect of the drawings that reminded her of what she remembered of that one dream. 

The various background figures somehow reminded her of the monsters she had been fighting in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Re: One certain line: No, I could not resist.


	6. Barathrum Larvarum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June 12, 1983.
> 
> A Sunday, with no school classes to interrupt Games Club activities.
> 
> They might even get started in time if a few visiting magical girls get back from their bucolic train ride in time!
> 
> Nipah~

The more Homura stayed in Hinamizawa, the more she felt slightly unnerved by it. 

It wasn’t there all the time, but it was a constant undercurrent. It itched at her, sometimes, an itch she just couldn’t quite scratch. Like a bug bite for the mind. 

Homura shook her head, tried to clear it. The sense of mental irritation was such that sometimes when she dwelled on it— ah, she was doing it again. Scratching lightly. Not because her skin was actually itchy, she didn’t think. The sense in her brain was just similar enough that she would start scratching without thinking about it. 

It had been worse, for the last couple of days. Takano’s notebooks had not sat well with her. 

And the worst of it was that Homura still hadn’t forgotten that Incubator’s comments to her, back before she had come to Hinamizawa in the first place. The comments about the effect surrounding the area, and how they couldn’t approach too closely to the city… and, most importantly, that every magical girl who had gone to investigate the area had never returned. 

And now the three of them found themselves stuck several decades backwards in time. 

Which was why the three of them had gotten up early and come over to the train station in Okinomiya. 

In the early morning. 

Why, Homura wondered, did she torture herself so? 

She knew the answer, of course. It couldn’t be helped. There was some event going on in Okinomiya around ten in the morning, and Mion wanted the entire Games Club to attend. There was no telling how long the event would last, so that left executing this little plan before it. The idea was to identify exactly where the boundary separating the area from the outside world was, and also make sure that they had an escape route to the outside world if needed; that meant thirty minutes to ride the local train out and another thirty to make it back. Moreover, if possible the plan was to make the trip back in two stops, with a layover where they would try to investigate the boundary more closely. Which, when you added things up, meant arriving not too far after the crack of dawn. They’d made the plan on Thursday night after looking over Takano’s notebooks along with their homework, they’d had plenty of time to get ready mentally. 

It had still absolutely sucked to actually get up and do it. 

Homura was already on her second cup of coffee – bless the vending machines, Homura hadn’t been sure they would even exist this far back – and that was after all three of them had ransacked Miss Tomoe’s tea supply before setting out. Kyoko had actually agreed to let the other two buy her coffee, too, which was telling. 

Homura glanced around the train station, newly purchased ticket in hand. Hmm. It was strange, actually. The station looked… different, to her eyes. Not quite the same as it had when she had first disembarked with Kyoko. Of course, she had been getting off back then instead of boarding. But Homura still wasn’t convinced. She sharpened her eyes and took a closer look. Well, the advertisements were new, that was part of it – they’d been normal brands before, but it looked like a local concert venue had spent a lot on promoting an upcoming event. Western classical music, by the look of it. Still, that wasn’t—ah! That was it. Somebody had left several pallets of tires out, on what looked like either a disused station terminal or on the next property over. Not just tires, either, now that Homura looked at it; some of what she was seeing looked like train wheels and even a few flywheels and big gears for whatever reason. Weird. It looked like some of the wheels had gotten loose, too, and had been temporarily stowed leaning against the walls of less-used parts of the station. It was kind of shameful, really; presumably the problem was very recent and the staff simply hadn’t had time to remove the wheels yet. Or maybe not? Now that Homura thought about it, this was before the rail reforms, right? She’d heard bad things about the old national rail companies before that. 

She turned back to the others, but as she did so Homura’s eye was caught by something else: a newspaper rack, with the new morning edition already in it. Normally Homura would have given it no further thought, except for the large print headline: “TWO BODIES FOUND MUTILATED IN OKINOMIYA OUTSKIRTS”. 

Hmm. After what she’d been reading lately, and now that Homura thought about it… If those mutilated bodies were related to Hinamizawa in some way Homura rather wanted to know about it.. If not, the paper was only a few yen, and Homura could use reading material on the trip. Why not? 

She bought it and rejoined the others. It was only a few more minutes before the train rumbled up to the station in the growing light, whereupon they boarded and claimed a section of seats for their own. 

As they pulled out of the station, Homura pulled out her newly acquired paper and glanced over the lead story that had driven her to buy it. It was simple enough. Yesterday morning, the bodies of two men had been found by residents of one of the outlying Okinomiya neighborhoods; they had been put into garbage bags and left to float in a local canal. They had apparently been quite spectacularly mutilated; the intestines of each man had been ripped out, their stomachs sliced open, and a nail had been driven into each and every one of their finger joint. The story ended with a note that the police were still searching for potential culprits and had declined comment about rumors that the deceased had been involved in organized crime, along with the usual plea for any citizen who knew something about the case to contact the authorities. 

Hmm. 

Homura mulled it over. 

It was a remarkably brutal murder, yes, even to Homura’s hardened heart. Too brutal, really. It had to be premeditated, given that – the kind of murderer who hadn’t initially meant to kill anyone didn’t generally go to such lengths. Well, no, actually, now that Homura thought about it maybe that wasn’t such a safe assumption around here given how that manager on the dam project had apparently been mutilated all those years ago? She considered that possibility for a second, then discarded it. Maybe the violence could have been explained by something in the local water, but that wouldn’t explain bringing that many nails. Rather, it was the sort of thing that you’d associate with a deranged cult or with someone making an example of someone. 

That wasn’t a reassuring thought given Takano’s notes, was it? 

The declined comment about organized crime also bugged her. Why print that specifically? It would make the investigation harder, wouldn’t it? And it might draw the ire of the organized criminals in question – which were, of course, presumably Mion’s family. Unless… could the Sonozaki yakuza have wanted the comment in the open? If they were making an example and had an in with the newsroom it might fit… 

Oh. 

_Oh._

The stomach ripping. 

Watanagashi could be read as “gut tearing” instead of “cotton drifting”, couldn’t it? And Takano had argued that the Sonozakis’ own name might mean “those who tear stomachs”. The rest of it didn’t mesh with Takano’s admittedly somewhat disturbingly detailed claims about the old rituals, but that did. 

So, Homura recapped to herself while lightly scratching an itch on her neck: there had been a pair of unusually brutal murders. The most likely motives given the elaborate kill method were either some kind of cult ritual or something related to yakuza business, the latter likely of the sending a message variety. The former pointed towards Hinamizawa, as a village with insular and deeply felt local religious practices. The latter basically implied the Sonozaki family – by Miss Tomoe’s account the sole dominant yakuza clan in the immediate region – which was in turn based in Hinamizawa. And those might not be mutually exclusive motives, given that Homura had both heard and read that the current head of the Sonozaki clan was suspected to be a major supporter of the village cult. 

Homura was going to feel safer once they stepped out of this train and confirmed the three of them could bail back to the outside world, that was for sure. 

Which wasn’t going to be too far off, Homura saw – the train had reached the edge of the valley, and even as she watched it entered the tunnel on its route to the next valley over. 

She breathed a further sigh of relief as the train rumbled out the other end of the tunnel a few minutes later. 

Wait. 

Something looked off. 

Homura sharpened her eyes and looked out the windows. 

The mountain valley outside looked familiar, somehow? No, she was just imagining things. 

She turned back to look at the others. Kyoko and Miss Tomoe were busily talking about something or other that Homura couldn’t quite follow, so she went back to her paper and started looking over some of the other stories she had skipped earlier. 

After a while she looked up from the paper and back outside, towards the small city visible as the train crossed a bending bridge and started to head in its direction. 

Wait. 

There hadn’t been a city that size in the next valley over, had there? Homura hadn’t been paying terribly close attention, but all she remembered were three smaller towns. 

She nudged Kyoko. 

After a moment she nudged her dozing friend again, harder. 

“Zzzzawha?” Kyoko sputtered as she jolted awake. She wiped her eyes. “What is it?” 

“The surroundings outside. Is it just me, or is there something off about them?” Homura pressed. 

Kyoko peered out the window. 

“Iunno,” she shrugged after a moment. “I must have been asleep when we rode in this way, I guess?” 

Kyoko _had_ spent quite a bit of the inbound trip napping, Homura had to admit; she should have known that response was coming. 

“Mis—Mami,” Homura continued, raising her voice slightly so Miss Tomoe could hear her from the aisle. “How did you originally ride into Okinomiya, again?” 

“Bus line through some of the villages to the north,” Miss Tomoe replied. 

“Oh, right,” Homura responded; she should have remembered that, really, Miss Tomoe had told her that once, hadn’t she? “Hmm. I do not know if you will be of any help, then.” 

“What were you hoping I would know?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Something about the surroundings is bothering me,” Homura explained. “I feel like they should not look quite like this. They feel off.” 

Miss Tomoe looked out the window. 

“They seem reasonably normal to me,” she said. 

“Thank you for checking,” Homura said, feeling slightly deflated, turning back to her paper. 

“Hmm,” Miss Tomoe murmured a moment later, and Homura turned her attention back up. Had she written Miss Tomoe off too quickly? “I kind of see it myself, though? The surroundings feel strangely familiar, somehow.” 

“Familiar, you say?” Homura asked. “But you are the one of us who did not take this train here to Okinomiya…” 

“Yeah,” Miss Tomoe agreed. “It’s weird.” 

“Eh,” Kyoko shrugged sleepily. “If something’s actually up, we’ll find out about it soon enough. Until then, I’mma go back to my nap.” 

As if in response, the conductor’s voice rang out and one of those old electronic displays lit up with a message. 

“We will be arriving in Okinomiya City in ten minutes. All passengers heading to that destination, please prepare to debark.” 

Uh-oh. 

That wasn’t a good sign. 

That wasn’t a good sign at all. 

“Well…” Miss Tomoe said slowly after a moment, “the good news is it looks like we’re definitely going to be back in time to make the club activity…” 

Ah, karuta. 

Rika had long since grown to hate that game. 

The nice thing about the club games was that they were unpredictable, both in which one Mion would bring out on any given day and to a lesser extent how they played out once started. For whatever reason, this particular karuta tournament lacked that redeeming feature. Rika could recite the seating of every single player from memory, let alone the order of the clues called out and their corresponding cards. 

The worst of it was, that foreknowledge wasn’t even enough for her to win! She might be cute and know where to start moving before the card was even announced, but in the end she had the smallest body in the group. Even if she started moving faster Mion kept getting to the cards faster, or wresting them away. Keiichi, too, once he got around to enrolling Tomita and Okimura. 

Then again… there was one thing different about this fragment, at least. 

Maybe the three new girls would make things interesting again? 

Well, they had to change the seating arrangements, at any rate. 

And so they did. 

But not as much as Rika might have liked. Since there would have been an odd number of players otherwise one of the younger boys had been bumped further out from the table; sadly, it hadn’t been either Tomita or Okimura. Worse, Mami and Kyoko had drawn the two seats down at the other end. But there had, at least, been one worthwhile disruption: Homura had drawn the seat across from her, next to Satoko. 

Would it be enough to change anything? 

The store owner called out the cue for the first card. 

The same first card, always the same first card. Luckily, this one Rika could get; it was close, neither Keiichi nor Mion were fully geared up yet, and her one real competitor could be discombobulated by the simple expedient of looking as cute as possible. 

Rika started to reach out to snag the matching card. 

Her hand never quite got there. 

Instead, the motion of her hand forwards stalled out and stretched off towards infinity as time stopped around her. 

It was strange. Not the phenomenon itself, for Rika was well used to that by now; it happened every time she followed Hanyuu into a new fragment, and sometime at other points when her oldest friend wanted to talk. Probably before she died, too, though she never remembered that. But that was the thing; it was Hanyuu’s ability, not her own. And, this time around at least, Hanyuu wasn’t here. 

And yet, for the second time this fragment, time had stopped. 

Why? 

Rika glanced around as best she was able – which was to say, she tried to focus on her peripheral vision since she couldn’t actually move her eyes. It could have been worse, admittedly. Back on Tuesday during the last zombie tag match she’d been caught with her head down as she’d been hiding in the trough. Still, it didn’t help much. 

Wait. 

What the fuck was going on? 

Somehow, impossibly, Homura was moving. 

The other girl’s hand snaked out towards the right card, grabbing it, and started to pull back. 

Homura’s gaze glanced over Rika’s side of the table, and for a moment their eyes caught. 

Then time resumed. 

What the hell had just happened? 

Rika was too discombobulated to even make an attempt at the next two cards. 

And the two after that, after the same thing happened again. 

What in Hanyuu’s name was going on here? 

In the end, the karuta match ended for the day with no winner. 

Not for a lack of trying on anyone’s part, Homura reflected. Especially not hers. She’d decided that the stakes were high enough and the necessary timeframes short enough for her to bust out her time stop again. (Especially since she apparently hadn’t used as much magic the other day as she had thought?) And then promptly stopped after a few cards. It went against the spirit of the club – as Mion had been busily reminding Keiichi – but Rika still looked off in the timestop greyscape and it was continuing to give Homura the creeps. Of course, even with her best trick off the table she’d still had a couple of other, well, cards to play. The old hairflip had been good for a couple of quite successful distractions for cards closer to her end of the table, and she’d snuck a firework outside during a “bathroom break” for a well-timed distracting detonation. 

Still, small bombs or no it hadn’t been enough to win. Luckily, it _had_ been enough to not lose – in the end the game had been caught in a four-way tie between herself, Mion, Keiichi, and Miss Tomoe. And then the store clock had struck three and Mion had immediately called a halt to the proceedings for the day and immediately headed outside. 

“What is this, Mion?” Keiichi asked her as he rushed outside in turn. “Are you trying to run away from your impending defeat?” 

“Sorry, Keiichi,” Mion said, gesturing apologetically enough that Homura suspected even her younger and stupider elementary school self would have managed to catch on to the gesture. “I’ve got work today…” 

“Right!” the storeowner interrupted over Keiichi’s continued protests, and Homura got the impression he would have clapped if not for the large number of paper bags he was carrying. “Since we couldn’t finish up the game today, here’s a consolation prize for everyone! Well, except Mion – sorry about that, but you’re a relative and that kind of gift could land me in hot water.” 

Homura opened hers up. Some child’s toy, not something she was particularly interested in unless it turned out to be rare enough in the future that she could sell it for a profit. She glanced around at the others. Mostly the same, by the looks of it. Well, except for Keiichi’s. Well, technically it was still a child’s toy, but… 

Well, it was a doll. 

“My, my, you seem to have gotten something quite unfitting for you, Keiichi,” someone said. Actually, no, Homura corrected herself, two people had said it at once, like an echo. Mion and Miss Tomoe, by the sound of it. 

“Uhh… okay, fine!” Keiichi said after a moment, with a tone of voice that sounded rather like the opposite of fine in Homura’s opinion. He paused for a moment, looking around at all of them, then extended his arms with the doll in it. “Here, Rena, you can have it.” 

“I can have it? I can have it?” Rena almost exclaimed in glee. “So cute! So cute! Haauuuuuu…” 

“Well, yeah, you and cute things just go together,” Keiichi explained. “It’s not much use to me, and no offense to you, Mion, but you don’t strike me as the type either.” 

“Ahahaha, well-spotted!” Mion said after a moment. “Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t born a boy.” 

Well, that was— wait. What was Kyoko doing? She was over to the side, and something about the way she looked was… hard to place. It almost looked like Kyoko was afraid? Nah, Homura thought, that had to be her own usual issues with facial expressions talking. 

Miss Tomoe seemed to be looking right at Kyoko, too, though, which was something. Maybe Kyoko hadn’t been able to block out the morning’s events as well as Homura had? She _had_ been awfully out of it during the match. 

And then, as Homura, watched, Kyoko reached out and poked Keiichi in the back, prompting him to turn around… as Kyoko adopted a demure posture? That wasn’t like her. What was Kyoko doing? 

There was a beat of silence as Keiichi turned and everyone stopped to see what was going on. 

And then… 

“Uh… uh… Keiichi… would you like to go on some kind of activity with me later today or tomorrow? You know… just the two of us?” Kyoko blurted out. “I know it wouldn’t be able to last after the end of the month, but… until then…” 

The eyes of the entire group swiveled around to look at Keiichi. He looked like he was trying to be very, very small for a second, like some low-life motorcycle thief getting asked questions by Detective Oishi over at the police department. 

Then, finally, he answered. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, placing his hand on the back of his head and rubbing it nervously. “You seem like a nice girl, but I only moved here a couple of weeks ago myself and I don’t really feel like I’m ready to think about a thing like that just yet…” 

“I— I understand,” Kyoko responded, blushing furiously, her rational tone belied by just how crestfallen she looked. 

She stood there for a moment, then nodded and started to walk down the street. 

After three steps, she stopped, turned the other direction, and set off at a dead run towards where the three of them had chained up their bikes. 

“… I guess we should go ahead and get food?” Keiichi asked after a moment, his stomach rumbling. 

“Sorry, I really do have to get to work,” Mion declined, gesturing apologetically. 

“I need to get home and get started on dinner,” Rena also declined; Rika and Satoko echoed her a moment later. 

Keiichi turned to Homura and Miss Tomoe; Miss Tomoe in turn looked over at Homura. 

Homura shrugged noncommittally. 

“Well,” Miss Tomoe said, “it looks like neither of us have a better idea?” 

“I concur,” Homura agreed formally. “Which poses the obvious secondary question: where?” 

They glanced at each other. 

“Well, there’s always Angel Mort again,” Miss Tomoe sighed. “But hopefully Keiichi here knows someplace better?” 

“Hey, don’t look at me, I only moved here a couple of weeks before you three visited,” Keiichi squawked. “Can’t say I’d mind going there again, though, I don’t mind the ambience. Pity it’s not something you girls can appreciate the same way, I say!” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Miss Tomoe said slowly. “Sometimes I think there’s a few girls who could. Right, Homura?” 

“That is ridiculous,” Homura responded with mock outrage. “Girls can’t love girls!” 

She wasn’t as touchy about that kind of insinuation as she’d used to have been back at that damned school, Homura reflected. Admittedly in a weird way it almost stung less that Homura realized that it was true – well, at least for pink-haired girls named Madoka who didn’t actually exist anymore. 

“Really?” Miss Tomoe asked. “Because I could have sworn I knew a junior or two who might disagree…” 

“I am inclined to agree, which is why I was quoting a classmate of mine – Hitomi Shizuki, one of Sayaka Miki’s child— excuse me, Sayaka Miki’s only childhood friend,” Homura backspaced. “For some reason I always think she had another one.” 

Because she had, once. (Right?) “Oh, right, I remember her,” Miss Tomoe said after a moment. “You know, I kind of wish Miss Miki had lived long enough to get to know Kyoko better. I sometimes thought the two of them could have gotten along well with a little more time.” 

Homura was tempted to make an acerbic remark about coming to blows being the mark of a good friendship, but thought better of it and bit her tongue. After all, it wasn’t like Miss Tomoe was necessarily _wrong_ – Kyoko’s fights with Sayaka’s witch in a few timelines spoke to that. It would just be contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. 

Keiichi’s stomach rumbled again, drawing Homura’s attention, and then she noticed Angel Mort further down the street. An increasingly welcome sight; she hadn’t realized how hungry she was getting, had she? 

Luckily, there was no line. The three of them took their seats, and after a moment their waitress came over to greet them. A quite familiar-looking one, and not just because she had also been their waitress last week as well. 

“Shion Sonozaki, yes?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Ah, yes,” Mion’s twin replied, looking at them. “I take it my sister talked to you about me?” 

“Your name came up, yes,” Miss Tomoe agreed. 

“Yeah, you came up when we were all walking to school together a few days back,” Keiichi agreed in turn. “Something about your old school or something— wait. Is something wrong, Mami?” 

“… Not really, no,” Miss Tomoe replied. “I was just thinking about how I arranged that trip to give Kyoko more time to talk with you and look how that turned out.” 

“Huh, I—waitwhat?” Keiichi mentally backspaced as his brain caught up to the words. 

“Wait a minute,” Shion said slowly. “My sister told me about that. Am I remembering correctly that one of you three visitors went to St. Lucia’s as well?” 

Homura, in lieu of an actual answer, raised her hand glumly. 

“I am so sorry,” Shion commiserated, then paused, looking over them. “I’m actually kind of curious about you now. My shift ends in a little over an hour; would you be interested in meeting up afterwards?” 

“I would be,” Homura replied before trying and utterly failing to suppress a large yawn. “Assuming I can stay awake that long. First order of business: I would like to order a coffee. Black, please.” 

“One for me as well,” Miss Tomoe added, to Homura’s surprise. 

“Coffee?” Keiichi asked her, surprised as well. “You didn’t seem the type – you do so like your tea.” 

“Tea is better in coffee in the vast majority of cases,” Miss Tomoe agreed with a smile. “But I must admit that coffee is better when you need to wake up fast.” 

“Heh, that’s fair,” Keiichi said. “Tea for me, please.” 

As Shion headed off with their drink orders, Keiichi looked back up from the menu. “So, why are you two so tired, anyways? It’s Sunday, shouldn’t you have slept in late?” 

_He would ask that, wouldn’t he?_ Homura thought. 

“Not when we misunderstood the time at which Mion was telling us to show up,” Miss Tomoe lied. “At least we got a couple of hours of looking at the city in.” 

“I just know class tomorrow is going to be a pain,” Homura agreed, before diving back down into the menu. 

And, after a few hungry minutes, into her food. 

Gods, she had been hungry, hadn’t she? 

“You know,” Keiichi asked as the three of them finished devouring their respective dishes and the obligatory desserts, “it occurs to me that maybe we should have tried to make sure Kyoko knew where to meet up with us before we came over here?” 

“Frankly, she ran away too fast for us to have done that,” Miss Tomoe pointed out. 

“Also, knowing Kyoko if she headed off like that she would prefer to be left alone for a little while,” Homura added. 

“I’m guessing we’ll see her at the old house we’re using as a campsite later tonight,” Miss Tomoe said pleasantly. 

Homura glanced up at the clock, then waved down Shion. 

“How long do you have before you get off your shift?” she asked as the three of them paid their bill. 

“About ten minutes,” Shion replied. “There’s a good spot to wait out back!” 

They did so. 

After a while and a couple of yawns Shion finally emerged from the back of the restaurant, now in something considerably less embarrassing – a reasonably formal-looking sleeveless turtleneck and skirt. 

“So I hear you once went to the same misbegotten school I did,” Shion said by way of greeting. 

“Worst nest of snakes you’ll find in this country, and that’s before you start talking about the teachers,” Homura agreed fervently. 

“I take it you were on the wrong side of the cliques, too,” Shion commented. 

“I was a naive girl with a heart condition I could not cover up,” Homura replied with a sigh. “What do you think? Especially since I was foolish enough to think my hair looked good in braids back then.” 

“Ah, so that’s why you were flipping your hair out of your face just then,” Shion said knowingly. 

Had she? Huh, if so then Homura hadn’t been paying attention. 

“I will admit the one advantage of the braids is that they do not get in your face the same way,” Homura conceded – that had been part of why she had worn them back in the day. Mind you, there were other reasons she liked to flip her hair now. “As for what you were saying earlier, though – I do not know about you, but I always got the impression that that hell of a school was an unpleasant place even if you were on the right side of the cliques.” 

“There was usually that one clique that was the darling of the administrators,” Shion disagreed. “But you have a point. How did you wind up getting sent there, anyways?” 

“I think I told your sister this?” Homura replied. “Mom died having me and I inherited her constitution. Father could not stand to see me because I reminded him of Mom and he was busy besides, so he shipped me off at the first opportunity and proceeded not to think of me until my health problems forced him to. You?” 

“There’s an old village taboo about twins,” Shion explained. “Usually I’d have been killed at birth; my demon of a grandmother took pity, but in order to avoid any possibility of a succession crisis I still had to be sent off.” 

“… It is saying something that what you just said might not be the most disturbing old Hinamizawa custom, at least if what Miss Takano has to say is accurate,” Homura mused. 

“Oh, you’ve met Takano too?” Shion asked. 

“We went for a checkup at the clinic, apparently there is a local strain of Japanese encephalitis endemic to the area so they wanted us to get a booster shot,” Homura explained. 

“That makes sense. I first met her at the local library here; she spends a fair bit of her free time there for her research,” Shion explained. 

They were silent for a moment, though Keiichi and Miss Tomoe seemed to be talking off to the side. 

“So, I’m curious – when you were still at St. Lucia’s, did you have Mister Aoyama?” Shion asked finally. 

Mister Aoyama? That was… oh right, _him_. He’d retired the year before Homura would have had to take his class, but she’d heard stories. 

“My class got lucky, our upperclassmen had to take him but we did not,” Homura replied. “I heard horror stories, though.” 

“… Mion said you’re eighth grade, right?” Shion asked. 

“That is correct,” Homura confirmed. 

“Yeah, that would mean I was one of the upperclassmen in question,” Shion said. “I can confirm the horror stories; if anything, he was worse than you thought, had wandering eyes like you wouldn’t believe and I’m pretty sure he felt me up at least once.” 

“The worst for me was Miss Yuuki,” Homura replied, relishing the chance to empty an old sac of venom. “Vicious hag, she knew full well I had the condition that resulted in my heart attack and she still yelled at me each time I could not fully participate in physical education.” 

“Miss Yuuki?” Shion asked. “I don’t remember her, we had the western nun instead. I forget her proper name, she always insisted we call her Miss Bridget. She was… well, you’ll understand what I mean when I say okay.” 

Miss Bridget? She was… oh, right. Homura had gotten so into this that she’d briefly forgotten the whole three decade difference. Miss Bridget… luckily, the name was familiar, she still had a reputation at the place decades afterwards. That had to have been quite the scandal. 

“Wait, the pale English gal?” Homura asked, relying on secondhand knowledge. 

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Shion confirmed. 

“Never had to take her, though I think she may have been the teacher for a couple of days one year until they had to shuffle assignments,” Homura lied. “My class probably had even more rumors about her than they did about Mister Aoyama, though.” 

“Really? Huh, we didn’t,” Shion said thoughtfully. 

Well, yeah, by all accounts she’d been much better about hiding her lust for her students. Well, until they’d caught her in the act of raping one of said students in such a way that even admin couldn’t cover it up. 

“I am kind of curious about one thing,” Shion said after a moment. “Surprised, really – I’d have thought I would have heard about a girl having a heart attack through the school rumor mill. They must have done a better job than usual covering it up.” 

Homura had a myriad of responses to that in her mind, but they quickly boiled down to two words: _Oh fuck._

It had gone through the school rumor mill, Homura was pretty sure about that. There was a quite different reason Shion had never heard about the event, and Homura wasn’t really sure she wanted the other girl to know about that. Or that Shion would believe her if she did explain. 

And oh fuck it was even worse than that, wasn’t it? Shion had mentioned that she’d returned to the area a little over a year ago. Which meant that Girl Who Got Away incident was only a little over a year ago. But… Homura had been eleven when her heart had finally given out, three years before that fateful March 16. And since Shion and Mion were twins that meant Shion was only a grade ahead of her. Which meant that if she’d actually have been born in the era the Girl Who Got Away incident would have happened _after her heart attack_. 

Fuck. 

And if things really went bad here she couldn’t even bail, because the entire point of the trip earlier that day had been to make sure that was still possible and they’d found out it wasn’t. 

Fuck fuck fuck. 

“That is weird,” Homura agreed, hoping that her train of thought hadn’t taken too long and pleasantly surprised that she seemed to be keeping her voice even. “Maybe they didn’t want to anger Father? That is the only thing I can think of…” 

“I don’t know, that would require that the nuns have a reason for doing things other than to cause maximum pain to the students under their care…” Shion trailed off, and then started laughing. Oh. That had been a joke. 

“Is it bad that it took me a second to tell whether or not that was a joke?” Homura asked, suppressing a chuckle and trying to ignore that she would have had trouble with that regardless. 

“The best jokes often aren’t,” Shion winked noticeably. 

They were silent for a moment after that again; Miss Tomoe was now watching them, while by the looks of things Keiichi had gone down a couple of stores to look at something. 

“I guess you must still have a couple of friends over there?” Shion asked finally. 

“No, not really,” Homura replied. “Why?” 

“It’s the only way I can figure out for how you learned about my little stunt,” Shion explained. 

_Fuck._

“… Uhh, I am… not entirely sure how I heard about that,” Homura lied, thinking on her feet. “You said you pulled off your escape last year, right?” 

“A couple of months over a year ago, yes,” Shion confirmed. 

“Right,” Homura continued. “I thought I remembered hearing about your escape from my classmates while I was still there, but that cannot be right because I had to go to the hospital three years ago and it is not like I can travel backwards in time. I guess I must have heard about it while I was still in the hospital? I forget how, though. I do not remember anyone sending me a card…” 

“Fair enough,” Shion said; was it Homura’s imagination or did she still look a little mistrustful? “Gods know I try to forget that place most of the time… did a bug bite you or something?” 

“Why do you ask that?” Homura responded. 

“Well, it’s just that you’ve been scratching your forearm a bit much,” Shion explained. 

Homura glanced down at her arms. Sure enough, her left arm had a vaguely raw spot where she had been scratching at it and hadn’t noticed she was doing so. 

“I guess I got a bug bite earlier?” Homura said uncertainly, only to then be interrupted by Miss Tomoe yawning again. 

“We’d better get back pretty soon, before we get too tired to bike safely,” Miss Tomoe said sleepily. 

“… Yeah, you have a point,” Homura said after a moment, then turned to Shion. “Sorry to have to leave so abruptly, but we do rather need to get back to Hinamizawa in the near future.” 

“I understand completely,” Shion replied, fishing out a piece of paper and writing something down. “Here. It’s my telephone number if you want to get in touch later.” 

Homura pocketed it, and the two of them retrieved their bikes and started the long ride back to their sleeping bags. 

Rika gazed out at Onigafuchi Swamp. The Demon’s Abyss, the name meant. The village itself had been named after it for the better part of its history, renamed only amidst the reforms of the Meiji era. But those same reforms had ended the swamp’s prominence. As Rika understood things the place was like the Tool Shrine, a place whose prominence had been based mostly in respect and fear, and as the village had fitfully abandoned the worst excesses of its past the swamp had increasingly been… well, not exactly forgotten. Ignored? 

At any rate, almost no one came down here anymore. 

_Except me, at least for today,_ Rika added to herself. 

Why had she come down here, anyways? Alone time, she had thought, but she was not quite sure about that. Even in a nosy village like this one, there were other places she could go to think, even after taking the need to avoid areas Satoko had trapped into account. More likely… 

More likely it was her mother. She had died here, almost two years ago as the calendar went, drowned in a supposed suicide to appease Oyashiro-sama. Rika wasn’t sure what it said about her that she felt so… ambivalent about that, these days. Maybe she had gotten over it. Maybe she had cared about it less than she should have. But then, what could she have done? She’d never managed to convince her parents – well, really her mother – to leave well enough alone and let the study continue without their interference, and then the inevitable had come to pass. She’d never managed to stop any of the other deaths in the Chain, either. 

For a second Rika was half-tempted to follow in her mother’s footsteps. That damn doll had come out today, after all. But she was only half-tempted. They had visitors this time around, after all, for the first time in any fragment, and there was no guarantee they would be here next time around. And there was certainly one difference this time around. Kyoko had ensured that. 

Rika pulled her attention up and looked around. No, Rika thought, there was some other reason she had thought she should come down here. She still couldn’t quite place it. Maybe… maybe it was because the place had once been so much more important than it now was? Rika had thought she understood the village’s past, but the last few days had been like looking down at the floor under your feet and realizing that it was only an illusion. 

And there was whatever had happened in the game store today, too. Although… that was a more worrying omen, in a way. Homura couldn’t actually be doing that, right? Could she? If she could, and Rika could get her on board… 

Rika had to at least make an effort this time, didn’t she? This world was not lost yet. 

The moon peeked out from behind the lone cloud it had been hidden behind, casting its reflection across where the water had a clear surface. On a whim, Rika grabbed a rock and tossed it into the middle of the swamp. It hit the water with a splash and sunk under, waves rippling out from the impact and distorting the moon’s reflection as it spread. The water would calm again in time, and the moon’s reflection would reassert itself. 

A fitting reflection of how much good her efforts to try to fix thing had done, Rika mused sadly. 

Except… the waves weren’t stopping. 

Rika took a closer look at the water’s surface, and for a moment of realization stood rooted to the ground in sheer terror. 

There was something moving in the swamp! 

And it seemed to be coming closer… 

Rika tensed up and prepared to turn and run as quickly as she could. Part of her almost felt guilty about it – she was the village shrine maiden, if this was an evil spirit she was supposed to be able to turn it away. But then she wasn’t fully trained and missing any gear, and more importantly spiritual issues didn’t do much good against things like wild beasts. 

She looked at the thing one more time as she started to get out of there. 

And after a couple of steps she slowly ground back to a stop. 

No. This wasn’t adding up. It didn’t look like it was chasing her after all. 

It burst through the water’s surface, flailing around, and then sank back down a bit, continuing to flail. 

It looked almost… human. 

And it almost looked like it was drowning! 

Rika paused for a moment. There were, after all, youkai that were supposed to look human. But then, if that was what was going on it was her responsibility to drive it out, wasn’t it? And if it wasn’t… then there was a person in the swamp, desperately trying to swim, and they needed help. 

But… how could she help? If she tried to swim out and bring the swimmer back she was likely to just get pulled under herself, and since the thing was smaller than her offering something like a branch might just get her dragged in too. A rope would have been ideal, but it wasn’t like there were any around here. 

Although… now that Rika thought about it, maybe the branch would work after all. She just needed the right spot. And there was a tree by the shore with a branching trunk, wasn’t there? 

She found a large dropped branch and tested it. No, too straight. The second one she tried was too rotted. The third one, though, seemed to work, and it had a thick subbranch of its own as well. Perfect. With difficulty, Rika dragged to the tree she had noticed. 

Then she painstakingly threaded the branch between the trunks until the shape of the limb and the branching stem caught in the gap. 

Was it long enough, though? Rika couldn’t see well and could only hope. She tried to move the limb back and forth across the water’s surface, hoping the creature would catch it and grab hold. 

After a minute, just as Rika was starting to think she would need another plan, the branch stopped moving freely as if caught by a great weight. 

Now to pull it back? 

It wasn’t working – the combination of the branch and the creature holding it was too heavy for her to move. 

She made sure the branch was wedged and got ready to go for help. Hopefully the creature would manage to hold on long enough for that. 

Except… as she moved away from the tree and got a clear look, she realized it had done better than that. 

It was slowly crawling along the length of the branch, pulling itself towards the shore hand by hand. Rika felt like she should have been running, but instead she stood there, transfixed. 

Finally, the creature managed to pull itself to where its feet – lower extremities, anyways – got purchase. It made fumbling, splashing steps as it got on shore, then fell forward, crawling a few more lengths before it collapsed totally. 

Rika carefully edged closer to take a closer look. For a moment the thing almost looked like some youkai with the body of a girl and a fish’s tail. But it was a trick of the light. Instead, looking more closely, what Rika had thought might be a creature had in fact been a human. Not someone she knew. A young girl by the looks of it, about Rena’s height and with short hair that looked light blue in the light. 

Rika bent down and tried to take a pulse, or at least check for breathing. Hmm. The girl still seemed to be alive. No guarantees how long that would last. 

Hopefully long enough for her to run all the way to the village and get help. 

Although, now that Rika thought about it, at the moment there were a couple of people staying a littler closer to here… 

:

The abandoned house the three of them had reclaimed as a campsite was far too uncomfortable with only two people in it, Homura thought. 

Admittedly a good deal of that had to do with how the other person in question was Miss Tomoe. 

Kyoko still hadn’t returned when the two of them had woken up from their nap. It was understandable; Kyoko had taken a big risk that hadn’t panned out, and it wouldn’t be the first time that Kyoko had needed alone time after being upset. As Homura recalled she’d vanished for the better part of a day this last time around after Sayaka had been taken by the Law of Cycles. Alternately, Kyoko might have just decided to take a nap before biking back; she _was_ used to sleeping rough, after all. And yet, Homura still couldn’t help but be concerned. This village wasn’t necessarily safe, after all… 

_Knock, knock._

“Miss Mami, was that you?” Homura asked. 

“No,” Miss Tomoe replied from the other side of the room, looking up from her homework. 

_Knock, knock._

Aha! That would Kyoko, back after taking a little while to pull herself together and waiting for the two of them to let her in. 

Homura got up, headed to the door, and looked out the (still-functional if slightly dirty) peephole. 

No, apparently not. There was no one outside. And yet, there was another knock on the door. Another knock on the door? 

Ah, of course. Homura hadn’t looked down, and the person knocking on the door had been short. It was Rika. 

Homura opened the door. 

“What’s wrong, Rika?” Miss Tomoe asked from beside her. Why would she jump to that? Rika was panting, yes— 

“I— I— There’s a girl over by the swamp who needs to get to the hospital and this is the closest place I could come to get help, sir!” Rika cried. 

There was no further discussion after that. Homura and Mami were out the door in heartbeats, starting to shoot down the road before they realized one after the other that they needed Rika to show them where to go. 

It took a couple of minutes to get to the edge of the swamp; Rika simply couldn’t run as fast as either of them could. It made Homura uncomfortable; she was all too aware that seconds counted in this sort of thing. But at last they made it, edging past a couple of trees. Homura could see the shape in the distance in the deep twilight; it would have looked like a boy to her if Rika hadn’t already said it was a girl. 

“All right,” Homura said authoritatively. “Let’s take a look at this girl and see if there are any obvious signs of injury. Rika, get ready to get help. Mi— Mami, if it’s safe to move her we should do that, otherwise we will need to stay here and offer first aid until the medics arrive.” 

She glanced over at her fellow magical girl. Except Miss Tomoe wasn’t there. She was half a step back, and seemed to be just standing there as if she were frozen. 

“Mami? What’s wrong?” Rika asked her. 

Miss Tomoe didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she raised a single trembling finger and pointed it at the girl on the shore. 

Why would Miss Tomoe have that reaction to a girl in need of help? 

Homura went to take a closer look at the girl. 

And then she got close enough to make out the girl’s silhouette. 

And suddenly she understood why Mami would have that reaction. 

No. 

This wasn’t possible. 

Homura’s eyes had to be deceiving her. 

Sayaka Miki was _dead_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Oh, right, the *other* reason I only tagged the two viewpoint characters. Have fun, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the show is just about to get started.


	7. Quaestiones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Visitors to the Hinamizawa of June 1983 are advised to keep their eyes and ears peeled on account of the sheer number of other shoes waiting to drop.
> 
> So are the residents, for that matter.
> 
> (Wait. What was that noise?)

Homura woke up with a start. 

Hmm. It was light out already. She glanced around the abandoned house, looking for the alarm clock— only five-thirty in the morning? That was unusual, with how alert she was feeling Homura had thought there would be only a few minutes before it went off. 

Homura thought about heading back to bed, but to her surprise realized she was too awake for that. Instead she started to climb out of her sleeping bag. 

“You too, huh?” Miss Tomoe’s voice said from behind her. 

Homura almost started, but managed to control herself. Instead, she turned around; Miss Tomoe was seated at the old table that had been left here, drinking tea. 

“I do not follow?” Homura admitted after a moment. 

“I woke up early too,” Miss Tomoe explained. “For the record, I already checked the door; I did not see Kyoko outside.” 

It took Homura just a moment to catch up. Kyoko wasn’t here – a quick glance over the rest of the place was enough to confirm that – and if she was was interpreting Miss Tomoe correctly the other girl had already checked the possibility that Kyoko had returned overnight, failed to wake them up by knocking, and then settled in outside. Although really, knowing Kyoko there was a fair chance that if that had happened the other girl would have just broken a window to get in. 

At any rate, either Kyoko was waiting outside somewhere where they couldn’t see her or she still hadn’t come back after running away yesterday. The latter… wouldn’t be cause for panic yet, especially since Kyoko might have decided to skip school for the day after feeling she had embarrassed herself, but it would be getting to the point where it was starting to be concerning. 

It was a pity, Homura thought as she got dressed. Her remaining friend would have been very interested to see who else had apparently shown up last night. 

Homura almost started at that. 

Wait, no, that had been a dream, right? An unusually vivid one, but still just a dream. Right? 

Well, it wasn’t like Homura had been the only person to show up. 

“… Mami Tomoe. Mami,” Homura corrected herself. “Did I just dream about the two of us helping take Miss Sayaka to the local clinic, or did that actually happen?” 

“… I was going to ask you the same question, actually,” Miss Tomoe admitted. “That’s why I couldn’t get back to sleep.” 

“… We have to head over to the clinic before school, do we not,” Homura sighed after a moment of thinking it through. 

It wasn’t even like she liked Miss Miki, not when she just kept going witch and making Madoka sad in the process. Well, _had_ kept going witch, anyways. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Miss Miki showing up here posed too many questions to ignore. 

“Rika was also there for that, we could ask her,” Miss Tomoe pointed out. “But no, I agree as Sayaka’s senior. If it’s actually her, somebody needs to be there as a familiar face and explain what’s going on. If we’re lucky, in both directions.” 

“Right,” Homura agreed. “Let us eat some breakfast and move out.” 

That took a few minutes, but only a few – though at the price of both of them looking slightly scruffier than usual. They made a quick circuit of their little abandoned-house-turned-campsite, just in case Kyoko had made a nest for herself nearby, but no dice. Homura couldn’t say she was surprised at this point, actually. Though it was a pity, now that she thought about it; there had been more than a few loops where Kyoko had shown signs of actually starting to like Miss Miki. Usually shortly before both of their untimely demises, of course, but still. And now Miss Miki had somehow shown up and Kyoko was nowhere to be found. 

The two of them continued to head into the center of town – thankfully, the clinic wasn’t far from the school. 

Wait. Who was that in front of them? 

Oh hey, that was the nurse, Takano. She’d helped with Sayaka once they got her to the Clinic, hadn’t she? She would know how Miss Miki was doing. 

“Nurse Takano?” Homura asked politely. 

“Hmm? Oh, good morning girls,” Nurse Takano replied softly after a moment, turning around to face them. “Have my scrapbooks been useful?” 

“Yes, but there was something else we wanted to ask you about, actually,” Homura said. “The girl we brought to the clinic last night, Sayaka Miki. How is she doing?” 

Takano took a moment to answer. “A girl you brought to the clinic last night?” she replied finally, then chuckled in that “fufufu” manner of hers. “I don’t remember any such thing…” 

“You were there last night,” Miss Tomoe said accusingly. “You saw us bring her in.” 

“Really? Are you sure you aren’t hallucinating?” Takano said softly. “Maybe you girls should get more sleep. They say Oyashiro-sama doesn’t like it when you don’t…” 

The nurse walked away, leaving the two of them to stew. 

Rika was running late. 

It made sense, given how late she’d been up last night, but it was still annoying. The good news was that even after oversleeping Rika and Satoko were still going to get to class on time. The bad news— well, usually it would have just meant that Satoko wouldn’t have had time to lay traps, but Rika had really wanted to drop by the clinic this morning and now she wouldn’t be able to. Ah well, hopefully she would be able to call during lunch, either by borrowing the nurse’s phone or by sneaking over to a phone booth. 

The two of them trotted indoors, for once the last students to enter, and swapped out their shoes. They reached their desks just as the bell rang out, calling the start to class. 

“Stand! Bow!” 

They settled in their seats after that, as the teacher glanced over all of the chairs. Including one empty one that had not been so on Saturday. 

“Miss Akemi, Miss Tomoe,” Chie-sensei said. “I see Miss Sakura is not here. Do you know where she is?” 

“No, and that is starting to concern me,” Homura replied. “I could understand if she was just cutting class, given something that happened yesterday and given that— well, let me just note that her academic history is a bit checkered. But we have not seen her since last night. Hopefully she is just roughing it for a day, but all her stuff is still at our appropriated campsite.” 

“Yeah, hopefully she’s just cutting class and didn’t tell us about it,” Mami agreed. “If she doesn’t show up by tomorrow I start getting worried, though.” 

Rika thought about that for a moment. 

“You said something happened yesterday?” Chie-sensei asked. 

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and not just among the two visitors. 

In the end, Rika decided there was nothing for it. 

“Kyoko asked Keiichi out, and he turned her down,” she explained bluntly. “She took off on her own after that.” 

“She must have taken her bike somewhere,” Rena added after a moment. “Kyoko had tied it up near where I had mine, and it was gone when I went to take it back out.” 

“Technically it could have been stolen,” Mami pointed out to Rena. “But Homura and I tied up our own bikes next to Kyoko’s and they were both still there, so I have my doubts.” 

“I see,” Chie-sensei said slowly. “I’ll mark her down as sick, then; I suppose lovesickness counts for a day, right?” she winked. 

Rika turned to Satoko. 

“You might want to check your traps, just in case,” she pointed out. 

“Ah do believe you have a point!” Satoko replied, managing to sound cheerful and serious at the same time. “Those three did say they had originally planned to camp in the mountains when we first met them.” 

Huh. They had, hadn’t they? Rika had nearly forgotten about that. 

“Well, with that taken care of,” Chie-sensei decided, “everyone take out your math books. Younger students, turn to 154. Older students, start back up where you were…” 

Rika settled down to the textbook and suppressed a sigh. She knew this material. She knew it a dozen times over at this point. There had been a time when it hadn’t been nearly so bad, back near the beginning, but now that her time in each fragment could be measured in weeks instead of years the classes were getting incredibly boringly familiar. Even helping the other students had gotten old, and sadly there was no chance of shenanigans during class hours – the principal would have foreclosed that possibility even if Chie-sensei didn’t. What was there to do? She could read ahead in the textbooks, as long as the teacher didn’t notice, but even that was getting repetitive by this point. She had a terrible seat for watching the clouds. 

Well, at least this time there were the new girls to watch. That was better than nothing. 

Especially after yesterday. What had been up with that, anyways? What with time stopping and Homura apparently being able to move during that? Rika was curious about that. And Homura was… nice to look at. Pretty, even. Rika kind of hoped she could look like that if she ever managed to get a few years older physically – well, like that but with larger breasts, anyways. 

So, not for the first time, she watched Homura. 

Today, however… the more she looked at the other girl, the less idle Rika’s curiosity got. Rika had looked at the other girl, but had she ever actually _looked_ at the other girl before? She was beginning to think otherwise. Something wasn’t adding up. It wasn’t obvious, but now that Rika was actually paying attention the more she was sure that the other girl was distracted. It wasn’t easy to tell, but Rika had been around Satoko too long – it showed the same way it would have for Satoko, though admittedly Homura seemed better at hiding it. It varied by class, too. In math Homura seemed about on par with Rena or Keiichi, but when it came to anything involving language she seemed to outstrip everyone else except maybe Rika herself. Homura was beyond even Mami, who seemed to be a natural-born teacher (within two days of transferring Mami had been spending as much time teaching the younger kids as she had learning her own material). It was much the same in history, too. Homura admittedly had a weird hole concerning recent events, but that was common to all three of the girls so presumably it was something to do with the big city. Still, in conjunction with everything else… 

Rika was still pondering the issue when lunch rolled around. Something about the situation seemed… weirdly familiar? But then, Rika had more important issues. Luckily, the nurse was understanding when Rika told her about wanting to check up on something with the local clinic. 

“Hello. Is Irie there, sir?” Rika asked. 

“I’m sorry, he’s busy,” the voice on the other end of the line replied – a man’s voice, but to her surprise not Dr. Irie. “Ah. Is that you, Miss Furude?” 

“Yes, it’s me, sir,” Rika confirmed. “Ah, sorry – who is this?” 

“It’s me, Okonogi,” the voice replied. 

Oh, of course, him. The head of the Mountain Hounds. Of course, it wasn’t usual for him to answer that phone even if Rika had used Dr. Irie’s private line. “Ah, of course, I should have known. I take it both Irie and Takano are busy, then?” 

“Business came up with the higher-ups on short notice,” Okonogi confirmed. 

“Would you happen to have any idea how long that is likely to take, Okonogi?” Rika asked. 

“No idea,” the man said. “Probably a couple of hours at least; Miss Takano said she was afraid they wouldn’t be done before the end of the day.” 

“I see,” Rika replied after a moment’s thought. “That means today is probably a bad time to come by and visit, then. I’ll see if I can make it tomorrow.” 

“You wanted to come by and visit?” Okonogi asked. 

“I wasn’t able to make it this morning, but I wanted to come by later and see how the girl from last night was doing,” Rika confirmed. 

“The… girl from last night?” Okonogi asked, audibly confused. 

“I was walking around last night and ran across a girl I didn’t recognize who managed to get herself lost in the swamp of all things,” Rika explained. “Irie said she was going to be fine but would need a day or two to recuperate.” 

There was silence on the other end of the line. 

“I don’t think the incident was relevant to the Mountain Hounds’ duties so I suppose Takano just never bothered to inform you?” Rika speculated. “Especially if the higher-ups contacted you early this morning…” 

“Yes, I suppose that could be so,” Okonogi said. “The higher-ups certainly did call fairly early this morning, and I know Dr. Irie was busy until then. I’ll let him know you’re coming the next time I see him, then.” 

“Thank you very much,” Rika replied, and then hung up. 

Perhaps it was for the best. She would have been cutting it a little close today anyways unless Mion was needed at one of her family’s jobs again. 

Besides… now that Rika thought about it, the June 12 games tournament had fired, so that meant at least even odds of Chie-sensei roping them all into the curry competition. Hooray! Something to look forward to! That didn’t happen every loops. 

Including this one, Rika was reluctantly forced to admit after a couple of hours of ordinary boring classwork with no signs of currymaking whatsoever. A shame. But then, as Hanyuu always said the dice were fickle and it didn’t do to get your hopes up too much. 

“Rika!” Chie-sensei’s voice rang out. 

Oops. She hadn’t been paying attention, had she? 

“Yes?” Rika asked meekly. 

“As I was saying: what is this country?” 

“Vietnam,” Rika replied promptly with only a moment’s thought. 

“Very good! Well, now that you’re paying attention, anyways,” Chie-sensei chided her. “Homura! What is this country?” she continued, pointing much further up. 

“The Russian Federation,” Homura replied promptly. 

There was a brief silence – it wasn’t just a wrong answer, it was a weird one at that. 

As Chie-sensei started to mark her incorrect, however, Homura seemed to recognize her mistake. “Oh, wait, no, it’s the Soviet Union. Why do I always keep calling it by the other name?” 

Rika was far too practiced to chuckle, or even show it on her face, but inwardly she was amused. Why, Homura had almost reminded her of some of her earlier loops! The ones back when the loops had still lasted years at a time, specifically; sometimes Rika had forgotten what year it was and given an answer for something that would only happen a year or two later, and had to backpedal like that when she realized. Of course, that wasn’t what was going on here, it wasn’t like Homura went back in time like Rika did— 

Rika stopped for a moment as a possibility occurred to her. 

_Could_ Homura have come from the future? 

Surely not, but… now that she thought about it Rika couldn’t actually rule it out? There was this incident. And, now that Rika thought about it, another one like it last week that she’d almost forgotten about. And then there was the greyscape, and how Homura seemed to be able to move through it. If the other girl was able to do that because she had traveled through time… 

The more Rika thought about it, the more she could barely contain her excitement. Maybe, just maybe a miracle had happened. Maybe, just maybe she’d somehow managed to run across someone else like her. 

She had to know. 

Waiting for the end of the school day was even more tortuous than usual. But Rika did, in fits and starts. Finally, finally the last class bell rang, and after cleaning up the classroom most of the students dispersed – even the Club, for a moment, as everybody went to use the bathroom or do whatever else they needed to do before club activities started. 

And Homura had drawn curry garden duty for the day, which was a stroke of luck. That meant Rika could ask her the one question she wanted to ask without anyone else around to overhear. 

“Homura… I know this is a little bit of a strange question, but… have you been time traveling?” 

For a moment, Homura was too shocked to respond. 

Then the fear set in. 

She’d wound up fucking it up in the end, hadn’t she? There had been something to how Rika looked in the timestop after all. Or she’d slipped up somewhere else. 

“Ah— no. Why would you think that?” Homura lied, and immediately cursed herself. She hadn’t been convincing enough, it had bled through her voice, she could hear it. 

“No? How unfortunate. I thought for just a moment maybe you had, sir,” Rika replied. 

Wait. Something about that voice— 

“Unfortunate?” Homura asked carefully. 

“It would have explained much,” Rika said. 

Wait. No. That was it. The voice. She hadn’t noticed it at first because of the words, but it was wrong. Too low. Impossibly low for some mere child’s voice. It was like Rika was possessed, like something was wearing the younger girl’s skin— 

“I apologize for asking such a weird-weird question, sir,” Rika or the thing that was trying to be Rika continued, and it must have realized its mistake because it was suddenly using Rika’s usual childish voice again. “I just got the idea into my head for some reason. Nipah~!” 

A flawless imitation, Homura had to admit. But the creature had made a mistake, and now Homura knew it was there. Could be there. Would be there. 

Homura glanced back. The creature was gone. Suddenly. Perhaps it had not been possessing Rika, but merely a doppelganger? She suppressed the urge, the itch to take out one of her guns. She would feel safer, yes, but nobody else here would feel safe and they were hideously illegal besides. 

Instead Homura counted to ten before finishing up the gardening and heading inside. Hmm. Gardening was itchier work than she would have thought. She’d have to watch that, at this rate she would scratch the skin raw. 

“Man, you took a while out there,” Mion said accusingly as Homura walked in the door. Or perhaps teasingly? Homura had kind of started to understand that after spending enough time around Kyoko and watching how Madoka and Sayaka— oh right, she really needed to see if she could track down Dr. Irie later and see just what the hell was going on there. “I guess gardening isn’t something you do in the big city, huh?” 

“It certainly is not something you do in the hospital,” Homura pointed out. 

Rika was there, and flashed a smile. Hmm. Was this the real Rika and the doppelganger had gone away? Or was this the impostor and it was just doing a better job of hiding itself than earlier? 

“Right, so,” Mion continued. “Kyoko’s not here today, but I think we can let her off the hook just this once while we have a game. And there’s one game here that can only support eight players. So, how about… Clue?” 

Homura glanced at the box. It looked vaguely familiar, actually. But… 

“Should it not be Cluedo, instead?” Homura asked. 

“I don’t think so. Why?” Mion asked. 

“It looks vaguely similar to a game one of the nuns at that place had supposedly brought over from England,” Homura explained. _The one Miss Bridget had left behind when she’d gotten arrested,_ Homura added to herself. She knew some of the other girls had managed to sneak it out afterwards, although the one time they had invited her to play had been a pretext to humiliate her. 

“I don’t know. I got this game in America, for what it’s worth. Grandmother agreed to get it as a souvenir when we made a trip over there back during the Dam War years,” Mion said. “Well, anyhow, let’s set up.” 

The game did appear to be similar to Cluedo, once Mion finished setting it up, though it seemed the board was absent. Which was par for the course for Mion’s games, as far as Homura could tell. They had finished assigning players to colors and just dealt out the cards when the principal interrupted them from the doorway. 

“Miss Akemi?” he asked. 

“Yes?” Homura replied formally. 

“There are two people at the front door who say they are here to see you,” the principal explained. 

Wait. _What?_

Who would have reason to come to this little school just to see her? 

Homura mutely nodded and started to head for the front door, her head filled with possibilities. Mion’s family? Someone from the clinic? That would at least make sense, actually, after last night. 

Well, assuming last night had actually happened and hadn’t just been a dream. 

Last night had happened. 

Right? 

Homura pushed the thought out of her head as she reached the entryway and switched to outdoor shoes. And then paused for a moment, because what she saw there was considerably stranger than any possibility she had considered. 

The people waiting for her were apparently two older ladies? Homura didn’t recognize— well, she didn’t know them, certainly. They looked vaguely familiar, actually, but Homura couldn’t place where she might have seen them before. 

“Ah, Miss Akemi!” one of them said brightly. “Just who we were looking for.” 

“We wanted to talk to you about something,” said the other. 

“About the festival, to be precise,” said the first. 

“What about the festival?” Homura asked flatly, her hackles raised. 

“Well, there’s one particular part of the festival that we haven’t been able to have for a couple of years now,” the second lady explained. 

“The Sinner’s Procession, to be precise,” the first lady continued. 

“It’s the central role, you see,” the second lady said. “There’s been no one suitable for it.” 

“We have high hopes for Rika-chama some day, but she’s not old enough yet,” said the first lady. 

“But with your help, we think we can change that!” the second lady said brightly. 

“We think you’d do absolutely marvelously with the role,” the first lady agreed. 

Homura’s blood ran cold. 

“So… will you help us out?” they asked. 

Oh God, the Rika-impostor had been a sign. Homura had trespassed the laws of the village somehow and now they were going to kill her. Not overtly, but Homura knew what that role was and that mock execution would be a real one soon enough thereafter. Who had she managed to piss off, anyways? To the best of her knowledge Mion’s grandmother was still fine with her, and the Kimiyoshi family as well. Was it those hardliners she’d heard Rika and Nurse Takano talking about? Or, now that she thought about it… was that Rika impostor pulling strings behind the scenes? 

She kept all of those thoughts to herself, though. 

“Uhh… I have only been here a week and I don’t even know how the ceremony goes. Do you really want someone like me messing up your town festival?” Homura asked instead. 

“Pshaw!” the first lady scoffed. “It’s not a hard role, not like Rika-chama with her festival dance. All you have to do is walk down the street in a costume and then kneel for a little while.” 

“Between you and me, it can get a little scary while it’s going on,” the second lady confided, “but it’s something you’ll be able to smile at afterwards.” 

“It’s an honor, you know!” the first lady pushed. 

For a moment Homura could not bring herself to respond. It was like the words just wouldn’t come out. 

“I am sorry,” Homura said finally, “but this is all still a little sudden. Can I have some time to think this over?” 

“It’s okay. Take all the time you need to think it over. We’ll be waiting,” said the first lady. “Come on, let’s go.” 

The two ladies turned around and started to walk away. 

“I’m still uneasy,” said the second lady, still audible despite facing away. “What if she says no?” 

“You worry too much,” laughed the first lady. “She’ll agree before Sunday." 

The first lady paused for a moment before continuing. 

"They always do.” 

Stupid, stupid, she had been so stupid. 

Just for a moment, Rika had gotten her hopes up, that maybe she had somehow met someone else like her, someone else who had gone through something like her. It had been a vain hope, of course. But she’d acted on it, and had gotten the distinct impression she’d offended the other girl in the process. 

And then somebody had come by and asked for Homura, and the other girl had bowed out of the Clue game thereafter. A shame. And not just because Rika would have liked to have seen Homura’s reaction when that round’s culprit had been revealed (Homura in the ball room with the revolver). 

It was enough to drive a girl to want to drink. 

She was pulled out of her fugue by the sound of light, quick footsteps at the door. 

“Ah checked all of the traps, just in case. They’re all in order, no sign that our Miss Kyoko got herself stuck in any of ‘em,” Satoko said cheerfully, announcing her presence as she stepped in the door. 

“Mii~” Rika murmured in response. “I can’t say I’m surprised, sir. Still, better safe than sorry, right?” 

“Heh, I got to make sure all of my beautiful traps were in good order, so it’s all good,” Satoko smiled. “Ah guess it’s like one of those television dramas where a girl makes a confession to a guy she likes, gets turned down, and needs time to herself.” 

Wait. Had Rika heard that correctly? Satoko had actually caught on to something involving, ah, affairs of the heart? That was new. Or was it? Maybe it was just how direct Kyoko had been; neither Mion nor Rena had ever done something like that. Metaphors and subtleties still tended to fly over Satoko’s head sometimes, after all. Apparently, however, even Satoko could recognize an actual confession for what it was. 

“You picked up ingredients for dinner yet?” Satoko asked, changing the subject. 

“No, sir,” Rika admitted. “We still have most of what we need in the fridge, it’s the vegetables we’re short on.” 

“Ah’m getting a little hungry,” Satoko told her. “I’ll go get some vegetables if you get everything else started?” 

Rika thought about offering to go for the vegetables herself, but quickly decided against it. She’d get faster service, it was true, but that sore spot was probably one of the reasons Satoko was offering even if she’d never admit it. Besides, it was Rika’s turn to cook today. 

Of course, there was only so much Rika could do before Satoko got back. There were a couple of vegetables they still hadn’t gone through in the fridge – luckily including the carrots, which would take the most time to cook – so she could let them start to simmer, and the rice would hold if cooked ahead of time. Or maybe it was time for a change? Maybe today would be a better day for noodles. But those didn’t cook ahead of time. A few minutes later, Rika sat down. Most of the vegetables for the miso soup were simmering in the stock, everything else that needed to be diced had been, the batter was ready for the shrimp and she was gently preheating both water for the noodles and the frying oil so that they would come to temperature faster later. Everything was sorted for easy access later, too. There wasn’t much more she could do until Satoko got back. Hopefully that would be soon, Rika was starting to get hungry. Sadly, even four years after Satoko’s parents had died it was still a safe bet that the merchants would be slow to serve her, so it would take longer than if Rika had gone. Couldn’t be helped, though. Until then, well, while Rika might be able to do the homework in her sleep at this point she still had to actually do it. 

Two worksheets later, Rika glanced up, noted the increasingly orange light, and turned to look out the window. Goodness, it was getting a little late, wasn’t it? After seven, now that Rika looked at the clock. Hmm. Village dislike or no, it shouldn’t have taken that long for Satoko to get back, should it? What could have happen— 

An answer to that question jumped into Rika’s mind, unbidden. The kind of answer that brought a cold chill to her skin. 

Oh no. 

Oh gods, please, no. 

Rika turned off the stove, abandoned her dinner preparations and ran out into the evening light, hoping that her worst fears would not be founded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Anglicized Satoko has decided that the best cultural translation of her speech patterns would, in fact, be a stereotypical Southern belle. Who am I to disagree?


	8. Descensus Averno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Hinamizawa? It just grows on you, doesn't it? Gets under your skin?
> 
> What is it about this town, I wonder? Is it the quaint village customs? Is it the local school club and its friendly members (even when they just don't quite seem to act right)? Is it the mysterious disappearances? Is it the occasional brutal murder?
> 
> Tell me... is your neck itching?

It was an effort for Rika to drag herself out of bed. 

She was never sure which was worse; the sudden loneliness of being the only one there or the knowledge of exactly why Satoko wasn’t there with her. It was even worse this time; usually Hanyuu was still there for company, but her oldest companion was still off sulking somewhere. Seriously, what was her problem with the transfer students? 

Still, Rika managed to get herself dressed and fix breakfast – well, most of a breakfast. Rice and miso soup, anyways. She’d even gotten it done early, too, which meant she had time to make one stop before school instead of afterwards. Good. 

A few minutes later and one long walk through winding corridors later, Rika stood at the door of Dr. Irie’s office. 

“Ah, Rika! I’ll say, it’s a surprise to see you here on a weekday,” Dr. Irie said. “Well, except for last week; thanks for coming in off-schedule, it really made things easier on me. So, what is the matter? Are you not feeling well, or is something else going on?” 

“Well, I had two reasons for dropping by. For starters, there’s the girl who we brought her from the swamp to recover two nights ago. How is she doing?” Rika asked. 

“Ah,” said Dr. Irie, looking down at the papers in his hands. “That’s an interesting question. I’d almost hoped you might know.” 

“You… almost hoped I might know?” Rika asked, confused. 

“So, you remember how we put the girl we were tentatively calling Miss Miki in one of the infirmary beds to recover because she was stable but probably needed to rest?” Dr. Irie asked. “When I arrived back here the next morning for my duty shift and came by to check on her, she was gone.” 

“Gone?” Rika asked, alarmed. 

“No sign of her or any of her possessions,” Dr. Irie confirmed, shaking his head. “Not even the outside shoes. Just a depression in the bed where she’d been lying and some mussed sheets. The nurse on duty should have caught it, but apparently she saw nothing.” He sighed. “It’s almost like she was never here. The best I can figure is that she ran off.” 

Irie sharply glanced up behind Rika after that, presumably noticing something that Rika couldn’t see. Her suspicion was validated a moment later. 

“Why are you talking to Rika here about a girl who doesn’t exist?” Takano’s voice said softly. 

“Now, now,” Dr. Irie chided the older woman. “That’s not something to joke about, not when a young girl is missing now.” 

“Is that so? Fufufu,” Takano chuckled. “I’ll humor you, then.” 

“Seriously, it’s not funny,” Dr. Irie sighed. “You were there with us, you would know.” 

“I will tell the Yamainu to keep their eyes out for her,” Takano said after a moment. 

“Let’s hope she shows up or they find her, I’d hate to have to ask the Great Families for help,” Dr. Irie said. “Of course, I suppose Miss Miki could wander out over by the mountains and run into Satoko’s traps.” He turned towards Rika. “Ask her to keep an eye out for that, okay?” 

“Uh, actually…” Rika said slowly and with effort, “… that was the other reason I came by to talk with you. Her uncle came back.” 

Irie’s face fell. 

“… That man,” he said after a moment. 

“… Is there anything you can do?” Rika found herself asking after a moment. Wait, really? She knew better than this, she’d tried it during the first few loops and it never worked. “She’s important to your work and I am your precious precious test subject. Can you mobilize the Yamainu to deal with him?” 

Rika knew it was a vain hope, knew that it wouldn’t be able to happen. Why had she felt compelled to ask, anyways? 

“… She has a point,” Irie said after a moment. 

“Hmm. High risk, low upside,” Takano said thoughtfully. “… But uou might have a point. I’ll call them.” 

She walked out of the room to do so. Rika waited for a few minutes, knowing and dreading the response she would get when the older woman returned. And sure enough… 

“I’m sorry, Rika,” Takano said, walking back in the door. “The police are tailing him.” 

“Tailing him?” Rika asked, going through the motions in spite of herself. 

“A couple of men affiliated with the Sonozakis were killed in Okinomiya last weekend,” Takano explained. “A woman by the name of Rina Mamiya was working with those men and is considered a person of interest in that crime, and Teppei Houjou along with her. They’re keeping watch on both of them. Trying to deploy the Yamainu while they’re doing so would be too much of a risk.” 

Rika had known, had _known_ that was going to be the answer but it still didn’t stop it from hitting her in the gut. (Although… Rina had survived? That was new. Always before she was the one to wind up dead.) She asked the followup question anyways. 

“How soon do you think they might be able to be mobilized?” she asked hollowly. 

“At a guess… not before Watanagashi,” Takano concluded. 

Rika could feel the rage welling up inside her, and it took an effort to suppress it. What had she expected? She’d known this was how it was going to go down, there was a reason she never asked anymore. But something about this world had gotten her hopes up in spite of herself and she’d just _had_ to ask, hadn’t she? 

Rika managed, after a moment, not to explode on the two people she was talking to. Instead, what she managed was a sullen croak. 

“That’s not soon enough.” 

Homura woke up with a cold feeling in her stomach. 

She _really_ didn’t want to go to school today. 

That impostor-thing might get her. 

If she was lucky, it was just a doppelganger and had taken advantage of Rika’s absence to use her shape for a second. Homura hoped it was that. Rika seemed nice enough, and frankly Homura had come to kind of like all of the local Club members. Besides, then she’d be safe enough if she stayed close to Rika. If she wasn’t lucky, though… then… what she’d thought was a perfectly ordinary girl was actually always that thing… and then it was just a good actor… or had it killed Rika and taken the form of her corpse? Could it change shape into another girl, too? 

Was that what was going on around here? Was that why every magical girl who came to Hinamizawa never returned? Had that thing gotten them, too? 

Was… was that what had happened to Kyoko? 

Was that creature responsible for why they couldn’t leave? Had they wandered into its gullet and the impostor was a lure to— 

“Oh, hey, you’re up. Good morning!” Miss Tomoe said cheerfully, interrupting Homura’s train of thought. 

“Good morning… if it is a good morning, which I doubt,” Homura muttered. Where had she picked up that line from, anyways? She couldn’t remember. 

“Considering how you looked yesterday and how late you’ve been getting up this morning, I took the liberty of making a little extra breakfast in case you wanted some,” Miss Tomoe said. “You can always make your own if you want, though.” 

Homura thought about that for just a second. Ordinarily, she would have preferred to do it herself, but now that she thought about it she really didn’t want to deal with that this morning. Ugh, she still felt sleepy even after a full night’s sleep. 

“You know, just this once the gesture is appreciated,” Homura replied, picking up the food. Huh, it was actual breakfast, not a half-hearted effort meant as a backhanded slight. Western instead of traditional, but that wasn’t necessarily out of character for the other girl. Was… was Miss Tomoe actually worried about Homura? That wasn’t exactly new, admittedly, but it hadn’t happened in quite a while. Though admittedly one of the times it had happened had been the earlier stages of the first timeline where Miss Tomoe had broken down, killing Kyoko and damn near killing Homura too. 

“Kyoko still doesn’t seem to be back yet,” Miss Tomoe said with a sigh as Homura finished her omelet. Huh, that was a shining display of synchronicity, wasn’t it? 

“Still?” Homura asked for confirmation. 

“Still,” Miss Tomoe confirmed sadly. “I already went around the place and checked. No sign. Her belongings still seem to be untouched, too. Well, what little she has.” 

“That is beginning to be concerning,” Homura said, and winced internally as soon as she did; it was obvious, she hadn’t needed to actually said it out loud. 

“I’d agree with you if she’d ever reclaimed her stuff,” Miss Tomoe said. “As it is, I’m a little bit past concerned by now.” 

“… That is true, now that you mention it,” Homura admitted, her blood running cold once more. 

It _was_ odd, wasn’t it? Kyoko was homeless, all of her possessions now were dearly won, she shouldn’t have been abandoning them so lightly even if half of them were things Homura had bought for her for this trip. Although of Kyoko’s three outfits only the school uniform was still here at the campsite, so there was that— 

“Insect bite?” Miss Tomoe asked abruptly. 

“I… do not follow?” Homura replied, confused. 

“Your forearm. You’ve been scratching it a lot, lately. It’s looking raw. There’s a spot on your neck, too,” Miss Tomoe explained. 

“Oh. That,” Homura said. “It just keeps feeling scratchy. Not an insect bite, I checked. The itch cream I tried did not help, either.” 

“Weird,” Miss Tomoe said thoughtfully. “Maybe you should have it looked at?” 

“Probably?” Homura admitted. “I am still not sure how much I want a doctor taking a really close look at either of us, though. Besides, the more I think about it the less I want to try heading in the clinic again until we have to.” 

“You too?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Huh. You agree with me for once?” Homura asked. 

“That place gives me the creeps and I don’t know why,” Miss Tomoe agreed fervently. “It just… doesn’t feel right. I won’t lie, I wouldn’t want to step foot there again if I didn’t have to.” 

“I will admit I am not really looking forward to visiting Miss— Sayaka,” Homura said. 

Miss Tomoe glanced at her. 

“You never really did get to know her, did you?” she said to Homura. “Braving that clinic is bad enough for me when I get to see one of my precious juniors again… well, assuming it’s actually her, anyways.” 

“And that she is still there,” Homura pointed out. 

“The more I think about it, the more I think Nurse Takano was just messing with us,” Mami said after a moment. “Although if so I suppose it makes sense you wouldn’t have caught on. You have trouble telling teasing apart from sincerity, don’t you? That’s been my impression for most of the time we’ve been acquainted, at least. And Takano’s good; she had me going for a while there.” 

“I am still not convinced,” Homura disagreed politely. “I suppose there is only one way to settle that, which means we are going to have to brave our dislike of that clinic sooner rather than later.” 

“Too late to do it this morning,” Miss Tomoe concluded after glancing at their alarm clock. “We wouldn’t make it to class in time. It’ll have to be after club activities.” 

“It is a pity they were busy yesterday,” Homura replied, conceding the point implicity. 

They had dropped by the clinic yesterday morning even after Takano’s words – Miss Tomoe had convinced her, and frankly after Homura had thought about it she had realized that the other girl had been right. But it hadn’t mattered. Everyone had apparently been busy – another medical emergency, presumably – and the desk clerk had informed them that school was likely to start before things cleared up, so the two of them had retreated in defeat. 

“Well,” Miss Tomoe said, glancing around, “I suppose we should get going?” 

“Not like we have anything better to do,” Homura agreed, grabbing her bag. 

The air was still nice, Homura reflected as they headed out the door and started the stretch through the overgrown development before they hit the town proper. It had been a pleasant revelation when they had first gotten here. By now, though, the charm was wearing off and something else was setting in. Sometimes it felt like somebody was watching her out there. The villagers sometimes claimed this old place had been abandoned because it was haunted, yes? A joke, Homura had thought, but now she started to wonder. Especially with that doppelganger around… 

“That’s weird,” Miss Tomoe said behind Homura, the noise of the other girl’s footsteps coming to a sudden stop. 

“What is?” Homura asked, turning around to face her colleague. 

“Look over here, on one of the bushes,” Miss Tomoe explained. 

Homura did. There was an object on it, she quickly noticed, some kind of jewelry – a hair ornament, by the looks of it. The shape of it reminded Homura vaguely of a pair of letter “f”’s out of English class; the symbol was also vaguely familiar in and of itself, but while Homura suspected it was reminding her of another class she couldn’t remember which one. 

“It wasn’t here yesterday, I would have noticed it if it had been,” Miss Tomoe noted. 

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Homura noted. 

“Neither have I,” Miss Tomoe said as they started back down the road to school. “I wonder how it got there?” 

“Someone dropped it there?” Homura thought out loud, uncertain of her conclusion. 

“Who, though,” Miss Tomoe pondered. “It’s a bit off the beaten path. Does anyone head that way?” 

“No telling,” Homura said after a moment. 

They walked in silence for a minute after that. The villagers were starting to head out and about in the morning light, Homura could see. Well, some of the farmers had already been up to tend to their fields, but now she could see people starting to head to other jobs – some in cars, some on foot. 

Something about the sight made Homura feel increasingly uncomfortable, and it took her a second to place why. 

And then she did, and suddenly she could not unsee it. 

They were watching her. 

All of them. All the ones she could see. 

Maybe some of the ones she couldn’t, too. 

“Ah, ah,” she heard one of them say in the distance. “Have you heard? She’s the girl!” 

“I see, I see! You were right, she’s a perfect fit!” another voice said in response. 

Homura cringed internally, and only an effort kept it off her face. She was worried about what would happen if she agreed to play the Sinner. But… at this rate, could she afford _not_ to do so? 

“Goodness, it’s like you’re the talk of the town this morning,” Miss Tomoe said softly beside her. “I’m not sure what to make of it. Although, Homura… at this point I have to ask… does this have anything to do with what you got called out of the classroom for yesterday?” 

Homura hadn’t yet managed to bring herself to tell Mami what was going on. On the one hand, the other girl deserved to know – she’d read the same scrapbooks. On the other hand… 

“Yes,” Homura confirmed instead, her blunt if quiet response hopefully distracting the other girl from not offering a deeper answer. “I’ll admit all this attention is giving me the creeps.” 

“I don’t know if they’re the ones I’d be worried about,” Miss Tomoe muttered darkly. 

“How do you mean?” Homura asked. 

“Look carefully over to the left, between the buildings. Try not to let on that that’s what you’re doing,” Miss Tomoe explained. 

Homura did, slowly. Nothing there, even when she faked a stumble so she could look— no, wait. There was something there, seemingly parked but in a spot where it really shouldn’t have been. An old Toyota Hi-Ace? Oh great, were they being stalked by some pervert or other kidnapper? 

After a fleeting moment, Homura decided it was worth it to stop time long enough to take a closer look. Hmm. Maybe it was just a van, although that wasn’t necessarily much better. There were two people inside— wait. Homura knew the uniform they were wearing. She’d seen it before. 

It was the same thing those janitors had worn when they were in that clinic. 

_Well,_ Homura thought sarcastically, _that’s not foreboding at all._

“I think I see what you mean,” she whispered instead. 

Gods, she’d woken up today scared of having to be in the same classroom as that Rika impostor and now she felt like it might be the safest place to be in the village right now. Ugh, she was itching at the thought of it. 

When they got to class, there was at least one pleasant surprise. Well, maybe-pleasant surprise, anyways. There was no sign of Rika, impostor or otherwise. No Satoko, either. There wasn’t enough time for a proper game before the start of class at any rate, so instead the two of them just headed inside immediately. 

Ah, there was the teacher now. 

“Chie-sensei?” Homura called out, loud enough to be sure the teacher could hear. 

“Yes, Miss Akemi?” 

“Before you ask, it does not look like Miss Sakura will be present today, either. We are still not sure what is up with her.” 

“It’s gone past understandable at this point and is rapidly edging into concerning,” Miss Tomoe added. Hmm, she’d described it as more than— oh right, it was probably just an understatement. “I don’t think it’s time to send out actual search parties yet, but it might be worth asking people to keep an eye out at this point.” 

“I concur with Miss Tomoe’s assessment,” Homura said. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Chie-sensei nodded. “You might ask Miss Sonozaki when she gets here, too, her family’s one of the ones to talk to if you want people to keep an eye out for someone.” 

Hmm. Because of their position as one of the Great Families or because of their position as Yakuza, Homura wondered? Wait, those weren’t mutually exclusive options. 

There was no time to ponder that, however, as the other students started to file into the classroom and the principal rang the bell. 

“Stand! Bow! Be seated!” 

As they did so, Chie-sensei glanced around the class. “Miss Sakura isn’t here, but you two already told me to expect that. And… Miss Hojo and Miss Furude are also absent? They haven’t called in sick. Does anyone know what happened to those two?” 

There was a discordant chorus of voices in response. 

“No telling.” 

“I don’t know either.” 

“Maybe they’re – oh wait, you already said they hadn’t called in. Maybe they haven’t had the chance to yet?” 

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Keiichi said. “Don’t they usually get here early?” 

“They do, they do,” Rena replied. 

“Probably for the best for you,” Mion said to Keiichi – Homura still wasn’t sure but that tone was teasing, wasn’t it? “Especially without Kyoko around to run into all of the traps before you do…” 

“Maybe Satoko was disappointed by that and that’s why she’s not here?” Rena asked. “Or maybe something happened when she was checking her traps?” 

“Hopefully they’re just running late,” Chie-sensei said. “We need to get started, though. Everyone take out your textbooks. I think our younger students need a little bit longer going over yesterday’s material, so turn to page 155. Older students, you may need to help them out – Miss Tomoe, Mr. Maebara, good job with that yesterday…” 

_Well,_ Homura thought, _it beats having to go over the same material again and again for who knows how long._

It was about fifteen minutes before the village school’s version of first period was interrupted by a belated arrival. Rika slowly dragged herself into the classroom and took her seat… alone. 

All thoughts of classroom decorum were abandoned – the entire class swarmed around Rika’s desk, curious, with the Games Club first on the scene. 

Well, most of the Games Club. Homura kept a bit of distance, just in case. This Rika… was it actually Rika? Or was it that thing again? 

“Miss Furude,” Chie-sensei said sharply – no, that had to be concern rather than scolding, didn’t it? “Where is Miss Hojo?” 

Rika paused for a moment, eyes downcast. 

“Shut up,” she then said harshly, and oh gods Homura’s worst fears had been right because she had spoken in the thing’s voice. 

Oh gods. 

Oh gods. 

Oh gods. 

Couldn’t that kind of fear have been unfounded for once? 

“I’m going home,” the thing added, getting up roughly and starting to head for the door. 

“Miss Furude!” Chie-sensei persisted, following Rika out the door. 

After a moment, the teacher was able to convince Rika to head with her to the teachers’ lounge to discuss whatever was going on. Every other member of the Club immediately made to follow them. Homura… wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. On the one hand, she really didn’t want to be any closer to that thing wearing a Rika skin than she had to be. On the other, there was safety in numbers and everyone else was doing it. After a moment, Homura made up her mind and followed. 

Homura wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop herself, but she got the gist of what the Rika-thing was apparently saying – Satoko’s abusive uncle had come back to town and was preventing her from coming to school. 

“How bad this uncle of hers must be, that I hear all of you say what you have and then I look at your faces and I think you’re still underselling the point,” Miss Tomoe said beside Homura. 

“Really?” Homura asked beside her. 

“Yeah. Well, not Keiichi,” Miss Tomoe corrected herself. “But everyone else. You can see it in their eyes, can’t you?” 

Well, no, but then people talked about being able to do that and Homura never really had been able to so it was a moot point. Besides, it hurt her brain when she tried to do that. Ah well. Homura would have to take Miss Tomoe’s word for it. 

At any rate, now that she thought about what Miss Tomoe was saying… 

“And Keiichi is the only other member of the Club who was not here last year,” Homura commented. 

Chie-sensei opened the door to the lounge after that, and conversation was quickly dominated by the local members of the Club asking Rika – well, this Rika, anyways – to confirm what they’d overheard her saying to the teacher. 

“I’m going to go over and talk to Miss Hojo’s uncle,” Chie-sensei said as the commotion died down. “Class rep, please maintain a study period until I get back.” 

As Mion acknowledged the teacher, Homura felt a cold dread. Sure, if worst came to worst the teacher wasn’t that much protection, but Homura would still feel a little more naked in the classroom without her presence. 

Oh gods. 

A terrifying idea had just come to her. 

Rika had said that Satoko was gone because her uncle was back. But this was still that Rika-thing? What if she’d been lying? What if the reason they had been late was because the impostor had caught them and eaten them and was using the uncle as a cover story? What if— 

Homura squelched the thought. She could worry about that possibility later, especially since the Rika-thing was here and the teacher was going to be out going to the other house. Unless there were two—no. This was unproductive. Gods, but she would have been more comfortable with Kyoko around. At least Mami was around (and wasn’t that a thought Homura wouldn’t have thought she would have even a week ago?). 

Well, and Madoka, too, if only in spirit. 

_O-Madoka, watch over us,_ Homura prayed silently, then glanced down at her forearm. 

She was going to need a band-aid for that at this rate, wasn’t she? 

The principal rang the bell, and the school day came to an end. After a little longer, the cleanup was done as well, and the students started to disperse. 

Sadly, there probably wasn’t going to be any fun activity to take the edge off the day. It wasn’t assured until Mion came back – she and Rena had the outside cleanup today – but Rika had been through too many fragments to believe there was the slightest chance of anything else. And, to be fair, Rika wasn’t sure she could stomach the idea even if there was. It just wouldn’t be the same. On the bright side, with Hanyuu so scarce there was nothing stopping her from getting stinking drunk this afternoon. 

As silver linings went, it was an awfully thin and tarnished one, wasn’t it? 

Footsteps at the door drew Rika’s attention. Mion, or the teacher? Chie had headed out the room again immediately after class, presumably calling Child Services with the principal. Ah, not yet, it was Mion instead. The older girl headed back to her desk, reached into her case and pulled out the remains of the bento box Keiichi had brought, taking out a candy. She smiled as she put it back, and Rika very much doubted that was only on account of the sweetness the other girl was about to put in her mouth. 

Sadly, Rika was entirely too familiar with that bento box. Like she’d needed another reminder that she’d somehow managed to roll more than one pair of snake-eyes this time. Ugh. Rika really wasn’t in the mood to get tortured to death again, but she also didn’t want to just leave Shion to her fate. Then again, Teppei was back so maybe it would be a moot point. She tended to die early in those worlds, and it wasn’t a particularly memorable death one way or another. Still. Maybe that kitchen knife of hers would be a better—no. On top of what it would do to everyone else, she wasn’t going to give up on these once-in-a-hundred-years transfer students before she had to. 

But… what even could Rika do? 

As Rika glanced back out of her thoughts, she noticed her thoughts seemingly mirrored on Mion’s face – the other girl’s face had fallen. Guilt at how she was enjoying a candy while Satoko was suffering? Quite possibly. 

“It’s not going to be the same without both Kyoko and Satoko, but I guess we soldier on,” Mami said off in the distance; most of the other club members who were present today had gathered there, though Rena still seemed to be busy with duties outside. “What do you have in mind for us today, club leader?” 

“… Is it even worth it today, with a full quarter of us gone?” Keiichi asked after a second. “It just wouldn’t be the same, would it?” 

“Rena, too,” Mion corrected the other girl. “She met up with me in the corridor, said she wasn’t feeling good and was heading home.” 

“I guess that settles it, doesn’t it?” Mami said regretfully. “… I guess you’re right, there really isn’t much point when almost half of us aren’t going to be there, is there?” 

Something about Mami’s expression drew Rika’s attention. Was the other girl… crying? Unusual. Most of the time Mami seemed nearly as poised as Homura, if not more so, though admittedly something about how the two girls did it seemed different – Mami seemed to have a certain upper-class refinement, while Rika couldn’t shake the impression that Homura was wearing her face as a mask. 

“Perhaps that is for the best,” Mami continued a moment later, more brightly. “That means we have time to head over to the clinic to see how Sayaka was doing; we were going to do that this morning, but we overslept. Everyone else is welcome to join us!” 

“Don’t bother,” Rika said, for once not bothering with the act. Well, technically the second time today, but this morning had just been a slip. 

“… Why?” Homura asked sharply. 

“Because I had the same idea,” Rika explained. “And when I headed over I was told that the girl you’re calling Miss Miki was gone.” 

“Gone?” Mami asked, alarmed. 

“When the docs got there yesterday she was up and gone,” Rika continued. “No sign of her, nobody saw her leave.” 

“… Just checking, but you three _are_ sure that you actually brought a girl to the clinic, right?” Keiichi said uncertainly. “You couldn’t have all been, say, hallucinating her or something like that?” 

That… was a better question than Keiichi knew, wasn’t it? Especially around these parts, and especially this fragment. Rika had to admit that it was possible she was hallucinating, especially given that incident under the shrine. But on top of some of what Irie had said, both of the new girls that hadn’t up and vanished had seemed to recognize the blue-haired girl, which made it less likely that Rika’s eyes were deceiving her. Right? 

“The three of us all saw the same thing as far as I can tell, so I do not believe that is possible,” Homura said thoughtfully. 

“Irie as well, and from what he told me when I went to the clinic there’s signs that Miss Miki _was_ at the Clinic at some point so there’s that,” Rika added. 

“I thought you said there was no sign of Miss Miki. Right, right?” Rena asked, more seriously than usual. 

“What do you— oh. I meant no sign of where she is now, not that there was no sign that Miss Miki was there at all,” Rika explained, realizing why Rena would have misinterpreted that. “Sorry about that.” 

“But then… where is Miss Miki?” Keiichi asked. 

“Maybe the same place Kyoko is?” Mion joked. “But seriously, that’s actually kind of scary. I’ll tell my family and have them ask people to keep an eye out. For Kyoko as well, if you don’t mind?” 

“Not in the slightest,” Mami replied. “Now that you mention it, we were actually going to ask you if you could do that this morning; I just forgot after Satoko didn’t show up.” 

“Well, that’s that then,” Mion said with an air of finality. 

There was an awkward silence for a moment after that. 

“So… I guess we all just head home, then,” Mami said finally, breaking it. 

There was glum nodding at that. None of them were particularly happy with that. But then, not doing it that way would have been even worse. That was how it always was, when Teppei came back. 

Really, there was only one appropriate response to this. Which was the one bright side about this – that bottle of Bernkastel wine was calling her. Which, in turn, meant that for once this fragment Rika would have to thank Hanyuu for being so absent this time around. Thank Oyashiro-sama for small mercies. 

Rika was the first one out of the classroom. And the first one to stop short at the sight of the school parking lot. 

There was a certain white car parked in it. 

Huh, really? Why was that man here now? 

The door on the right side of the car opened, and a certain middle-aged man got out. 

“Hello, hello,” Detective Ooishi said in that slow drawl of his, pulling out his badge. “Ah, there’s the girls I wanted to speak with. Homura Akemi, Mami Tomoe, if I can have a word?” 

_Oh, fuck_ , Homura thought as she got into the policeman’s car – Detective Ooishi’s car, given how he’d just introduced himself. Had the police somehow managed to catch on to the two of them in some way? Or even just Homura herself? That would be bad enough – Homura was pretty sure the contents of her shield’s storage comprised at least a dozen felonies, after all. 

“Oh, no no no, it’s nothing like that,” the older man laughed, as if reading her mind. “You two girls aren’t in trouble or anything. Well, unless one of you knows who set off that firework over by a certain game shop in Okinomiya last Sunday. We think it was some delinquents we picked up later in the day, but we know how your club’s games get sometimes – if that’s the case, please remind whoever is responsible to keep the games within the limits of the law, okay? Ah, but that’s not a big deal, just a misdemeanor – the only reason I really even bring it up is that the store owner complained about the noise.” 

“Then why arrest the delinquents?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“For stealing motorcycles,” Ooishi replied, sounding amused. “But no. I was here concerning another matter. Have the two of you heard anything about a couple of murders in Okinomiya last weekend, by any chance?” 

“No,” Miss Tomoe said. 

“… I may have, actually. Are you talking about the rather brutal ones that were in the papers on Sunday?” Homura said. “The two men who were tortured to death?” 

“Indeed I was,” Ooishi confirmed. “Huh. You bought and read a newspaper? It’s not every schoolgirl I know who does that, especially if their family wasn’t buying it for them.” 

“We were taking a quick train trip down to the next valley over and I wanted something to read on the way,” Homura explained. 

“… Are you suggesting that you think _we_ were associated with these murders you’re talking about in some way?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Ooishi laughed. “I very much doubt two schoolgirls like you could have done that to those men. But since you’re not locals, I thought I would ask you just in case – have either of you heard anything that might be about this case around the town rumor mil?” 

“I… don’t think so?” Miss Tomoe replied. 

“I cannot think of anything that might apply,” Homura agreed. “Although neither of us is particularly well attuned to the local rumors, so I am not sure how much that says.” 

“You’re better patched in than you might think,” Ooishi replied seriously. “The club you’ve joined tends to be surprisingly well-connected in town. It’s just that most of them won’t talk to me.” 

“Why?” Homura asked. _Well, besides the part where Mion’s family are Yakuza,_ she added silently to herself. 

“Lingering effects from the Dam War, I think,” Ooishi mused. “The townspeople fought like demons to try to stop the dam – constant protests, and the rumors say even more than that. Unfortunately, that put them at cross purposes with us much of the time, and those wounds have never fully healed. You’re sure? You’ve heard nothing.” 

“Not a thing that I can think of,” Miss Tomoe confirmed. 

“Is that so?” Ooishi said. “Ah well. I suppose I can’t be surprised, but I will admit I had hoped. Especially with it almost being time for the village festival.” 

“The so-called Chain of Bizarre Deaths,” Homura inferred. 

“Yes,” Ooishi agreed. “These deaths are too early to be part of the Chain proper, but I’m worried the killers will strike again.” 

The detective paused to sigh, then continued. “If more murders happen on the night of Watanagashi, the villagers will undoubtedly believe that the curse has struck again. But I’ve never been able to believe that. I have my suspicions, though. You’re aware that your friend Mion’s family is connected to the Yakuza?” 

“We had a suspicion, yes,” Homura conceded. 

“I suspect they’re behind the murders,” Ooishi said, almost conspiratorially. “But I’ve never been able to prove it, and I’m getting old. I’ll have to retire soon, you know. I just hope I can solve the case and prove it was them before then.” 

Homura… wasn’t sure about the detective’s conclusion. Not now. There was another possibility, wasn’t there? Could it be that that… thing was feeding every Watanagashi and that was what was going on? Oh shit, and Rika’s parents had both been killed as part of that. Maybe it had killed the real Rika then, too, and nobody had noticed because it had worn her corpse? 

She didn’t voice her ugly speculations, however. They were too strange, too… well, _magical_ for this poor policeman to listen to. Besides, Homura really didn’t want to talk to the police any more than she had to. 

“Well, I’ll let you be on your way,” Ooishi said after a moment. “Oh, right, but before I do. Miss Akemi, if I could give you some friendly advice?” 

“Yes?” Homura replied, confused. 

“I hear there’s a bit of a commotion in the village regarding your potential participation in a certain part of the festival…” 

“This is so,” Homura confirmed; Miss Tomoe seemed to start beside her at the words. 

“The way I heard it, you haven’t given your answer one way or another yet. So, my word of advice: don’t wait too long! The next village meeting is on Thursday, and they’ll undoubtedly want to finalize the festival preparations then. If you haven’t given them your reply by then, they might consider that… impolite.” 

Ooishi paused for a moment after that for effect. 

“Well, I bid you girls a fine afternoon!” he finished, waving to indicate that the conversation was over and they were free to go. 

“Well, I guess let’s get going,” Miss Tomoe said a moment later, as Detective Ooishi pulled away after letting them out. 

It took Homura a moment to agree, and then only silently. 

She really wasn’t looking forwards to having to give an answer on that Sinner’s Procession. 

But then, Ooishi was right, wasn’t he? She also probably wouldn’t like the consequences of _not_ giving an answer. 

Ugh.


	9. Exsecratio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It looked like her, but was not.  
> You could see it in her eyes.
> 
> It looked like her, but was not.  
> You could hear it in her voice.
> 
> It looked like me, but was not.  
> What became of the real me?"
> 
> \- Hellflower

Rika woke up to the obnoxiously loud sound of an alarm. 

Blech. It wasn’t usually that loud, what was going on? 

She rousted herself, and realized that she’d never actually gotten into the futon last night. Wait. No. She had but she’d been so worried that she hadn’t been able to sleep, hadn’t she? So she’d gotten up, and she must have finally fallen asleep before she’d gotten back to the futon because she’d woken up sleeping slumped over the table. 

She made her way over to the alarm and silenced it. Oof. Her head still hurt. She glanced at the futon, still rumpled from where she’d initially tried to sleep in it before giving up, and then back at the table. Ah, was this the legendary downside of too much wine? She’d had one of her diluted cups before bed. Then she hadn’t been able to sleep and had taken a second one in the hopes it would help. And then a third. And she wasn’t sure how well she’d diluted that one, either. And then she’d left the cup and the bottle on the table instead of putting them up properly. 

She would have expected Hanyuu to scold her for this even more than her oldest companion usually did, since Hanyuu would be feeling it too. But Hanyuu was once again nowhere to be seen. What was up with that? 

Ah well. She could at least get ready for school. Headache or no, Rika put up the cup and bottle, put away the futon, and got breakfast started. Nothing fancy today, though, not with how she was feeling. Once the vegetables were chopped and simmering and Rika was waiting for the meal to cook, she got around to clearing off the papers she had left on the table so she would have a place to eat. 

Huh. Those _weren’t_ her homework like she had thought. What had she left out on the table, anyways? Looking it over… Rika could see Takano’s scrapbooks, and a couple of documents from the Shrine proper, and one of those children’s drawings. Wait. Hadn’t she put all of them back? Actually, now that Rika thought about it she couldn’t remember. She’d tried to, but part of her remembered realizing that one of them had stuck to her as she was climbing up the ladder out of that chamber? 

Rika shrugged and moved on. She at least remembered what she’d been doing last night, at any rate. It sure looked like this fragment was a lost cause – all the signs were that somehow she’d rolled Teppei coming back and Shion losing it at the same time, and something was going on with the new girls as well. For some fool reason even though she knew it was a lost cause, though, some part of her didn’t seem to want to give up on this world. (Really, what was it with her brain?) But the bigger thing was that something was up with Hinamizawa in a way Rika had never seen before. That, that she might be able to figure out before she died again. That was what had kept her up, her mind running through things and trying to come to a solution. Nothing else had worked, including the wine, so eventually for lack of any better ideas Rika had gotten up and run over everything she knew. 

To no avail. 

It was annoying, because Rika got the sense that there was _something_ there. Something about the wording of a couple of the old quotes was gnawing at her. She just couldn’t place it. 

Rika glanced up at the clock. Oh well. The soup would be done by now anyways, and the rice with it. And she needed to get out the door soon if she wanted to get to class on time. 

And still her fool brain refused to give up on what it was thinking. 

It was going to be a long morning, wasn’t it? 

It was yet another morning, and Kyoko was still nowhere to be seen. 

“What is it with Kyoko? This is not like her,” Homura muttered to herself. 

Well, she said that, anyways, but really Homura knew what was going on, didn’t she? She just didn’t want to admit it. Even to herself. Foolish, foolish. 

“You can say that again,” Miss Tomoe said from the other girl’s perch by the burner – hmm, Homura had to have spoken louder than she thought. “No sign of Sayaka, either… at this rate, man, I know it shouldn’t be possible given that both of us and Rika both saw her but I’m still starting to wonder if that nurse Takano was right and we’re just imagining her showing up.” 

Homura… well, she wasn’t actually sure whether she would prefer that over the alternative fate for Miss Miki that kept coming to mind, if she was going to be honest with herself. Fucking Miss Miki, repeatedly messing up a perfectly good Madoka. But the second-order consequences would still be a problem. And… on the other hand, part of Homura felt that she wouldn’t have minded having someone she despised like Miss Miki around just to have somebody else she could talk to about certain things. 

After all, fuck, she was getting along tolerably well with Miss Tomoe right now, wasn’t she? 

“You’re looking a bit haggard today,” Miss Tomoe said with shocking amiability as she finished heating up breakfast. 

“I could say the same about you,” Homura replied. 

“Yeah, I didn’t sleep too well. You?” Miss Tomoe said. 

“… Have I ever?” Homura wondered aloud, half to herself. 

It was saying something that the best sleep of Homura’s life might well have been when she was at the hospital and always fretting that she was at death’s door, wasn’t it? 

“My tea just isn’t cutting it,” Miss Tomoe said as she carefully finished her third cup. “Mind if I borrow some of your coffee?” 

“No, that is fine. I have been drinking some of your tea, after all.” 

Admittedly that was out of politeness as much as anything, but the point stood. While Miss Tomoe poured herself a cup, Homura busied herself serving breakfast. 

After a little while, Homura glanced up at the clock and sighed. 

“I guess we had better get going,” she said. 

The walk to school seemed to get longer every day, Homura reflected as the two of them headed down the road to the middle of town. It only made sense – back when they’d first arrived here she hadn’t figured out what was going on yet. Like a damn fool she’d thought that the members of the local club had been reasonably trustworthy. 

Then again, the actual club members probably _had_ been trustworthy. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that at least some of the Club members were no longer actually themselves. 

Homura was still ruminating on that when the two of them finally reached the school grounds; Miss Tomoe had been blessedly quiet. The chatter of the schoolyard was another matter, but after long enough Homura had learned to tone it out. Well, until one particular conversation caught her ear, anyways. 

“Have you heard? Have you heard the news?” one of the younger kids asked his friend as they ran by. 

“The one about how Miss Ryuuguu got attacked by yesterday?” the friend replied. 

“Yeah. It was some woman from Okinomiya, the way I heard it,” the first kid said. 

Homura could see the friend reply, but she couldn’t make out the words – they were too far away now. That was unfortunate, if true. She would have to see if there was anything she could do to— 

An idea crept into Homura’s mind, and her concern slowly but surely morphed to dread. The kid had said it had been some woman from Okinomiya. What if he had been wrong? Or just didn’t know enough? If it hadn’t just been a woman… if it had been that doppelganger… or worse, another one like it… well, that was just a terrifying possibility, wasn’t it? Nobody else around here seemed to notice them. Could one of those doppelgangers have successfully killed Rena and started wearing her skin, the same way it had done to Rika? Or worse, converted Rena into another one of them? If there was just the one, then you could tell because it wouldn’t be able to impersonate two people at once. But if there was more than one… 

Wait. Homura had thought that nobody around here seemed to notice them. What if she’d been wrong about that in a very specific way? What if somebody had noticed these doppelgangers, and written it down, and then eventually people had forgotten what it meant? 

Could… could these doppelgangers be the origins of Oyashiro-sama’s Curse? Either because people noticed the disappearances or because people sometimes noticed something was off about the supposedly living people who were actually dead and being impersonated? 

It could fit. 

Homura didn’t remember anything in Takano’s scrapbooks that really pushed towards that, but the nurse was not infallible. And maybe she’d missed something. She’d have to take another look over them later. 

As it was, though… 

It took effort for Homura not to make an audible sigh. Instead she squared her shoulders, braced herself, and headed inside as the bell rang. 

Rena wasn’t here yet, but everyone else was. Including that girl. She acted cute and innocent, but Homura knew better now— 

Once again, Homura’s thought process was interrupted, this time by Rena’s arrival to class – still on time, just later than everyone else. Well, except Kyoko. And Satoko, too. But still. She’d come in with the teacher, too, so maybe there was something to the rumors. And now that Homura eyed the other girl carefully, she could see it for herself – there were bruises around the other girl’s neck. Someone had attempted to strangle her? Or that was what someone wanted her to think… 

“Ah, Rena! You’re okay!” Mion said, running over to hug the other girl. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Rena smiled. “I got lucky, though! There was a policeman around for some reason, he intervened after I managed to get that woman off me.” 

Well, that was reassuring, at least. For now, anyways. No sign that this Rena was fake the way that Rika was. 

“Geez, Rena,” Keiichi said. “You really did get lucky, didn’t you?” 

“Mii~” the Rika-thing agreed. “If not for the policeman, there would be a body stinking in the sun right now!” 

“Man…” Keiichi said, more seriously and thoughtfully than before. “You know… it’s kind of a shame, really.” 

“How so?” Rena asked 

“If only you could have gotten Satoko’s uncle to do that instead,” Keiichi explained. 

They all fell silent at that. 

And… on an entirely different line of thought, an idea occurred to Homura. 

Homura and Miss Tomoe had helped Rika take Miss Miki to the clinic. The nurse at the clinic had said that no such girl had ever been brought in. A contradiction, there. Homura had thought that Miss Miki must have run away. But there was another possibility there, wasn’t there? It was unlikely to have been a hallucination, because all three of them had seen the same thing. But there was a way that Miss Miki could have been something other than a hallucination and yet still not been real. 

After all, there was a creature around here capable of taking the form of human girls, wasn’t there? 

But then, that posed another question. 

Why were any of the three of them— 

Oh, right. 

But that only made it stranger. Why were Homura and Miss Tomoe not dead yet? 

Maybe Miss Miki’s doppelganger had actually been injured, and the Rika doppelganger had let them go in thanks for helping it? 

Maybe the doppelgangers could only impersonate someone who was alone? 

Wait. No. 

There was a far more obvious solution. 

The doppelgangers couldn’t kill Homura. Not yet. 

After all… they needed Homura alive for the festival, didn’t they? 

It had, in fact, been another interminable day of class. 

Unlike some other days, though, Rika had been dreading what would happen after class nearly as much as having to deal with the same material over and over. In a few moments— ah, no. There was the teacher now, back from checking with the principal over Satoko’s situation. 

To Rika’s complete lack of surprise, Chie-sensei gestured defeat. 

“After we contacted, the Child Welfare Office sent someone over to check on Miss Hojo,” she told the assembled club members sadly. “Apparently they said that Miss Hojo told them she was fine and not being abused.” 

“Well that’s a crock of shit,” Keiichi said bitterly. 

“Keiichi…” Rena began. 

“There’s only so much they can do legally if the victim is unwilling to claim she was abused,” Chie pointed out. 

“Oh come on!” Keiichi replied vehemently. “If they didn’t break down the door to see how Satoko was doing then what’s the freaking point?” 

Chie started to talk again and Keiichi started to try to talk over her, but was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He tried to pull away, but the grip was strong enough that he couldn’t – all he could do was turn slightly, revealing the hand as being one of Miss Tomoe’s. 

“This is not like you, Keiichi,” the other girl said levelly, staring Keiichi down. 

After a moment, Keiichi seemed to pull himself together. 

“So… what would you propose we do?” Keiichi asked, still heatedly but not the same way as before. 

“I don’t know,” Mami conceded. “But I don’t see how losing our tempers is going to help us rescue Satoko in any way, shape or form. Surely there’s got to be something we can think of if we just keep calm and think about it. I want to say there should be a way do this within the rules, right? Like, if nothing else we haven’t done anything like try to appeal to social services yet…” 

There was silence for a moment as all of them thought about that. And then… 

“She’s right, isn’t she?” Keiichi said. “They’ve botched their assessment of the situation, and we need to tell them that.” 

“That’s a good idea,” Rena said. “That is the proper course of action, after all.” 

_If only,_ Rika thought sadly. They’d tried this before, it had never worked. 

“Come on, let’s get over to the Child Welfare Office. Both of you are going to come along as well, right?” Keiichi asked. 

“Gladly,” Mami replied. 

“… I suppose,” Homura said after a moment, her face not quite readable. There was something to that reply, Rika was sure, but she couldn’t place it. 

Whatever it was, it passed after a moment, and Homura looked at them with sudden decisiveness. “Yes. It is for the best. Let us go.” 

The six of them headed out to the middle of town. All of the actual government buildings were in Okinomiya, and getting there by bike was the fastest way, but it wasn’t like you brought your bike to school so they first had to disperse to collect them – a process that took longer than it might have otherwise, since Homura and Mami had camped on the far side of town. At length, though, they got moving down the road to Okinomiya. Not before collecting more than their fair share of looks from the villagers, though. And not for the usual reasons. And mostly concentrated on one of their number in particular. 

“Man, Homura, it felt like everyone in town was staring at you as we went by,” Keiichi said as they pedaled, confusion written on his face. “What’s up with that?” 

“Rena wants to know too! What’s going on, I wonder, I wonder,” Rena added. 

“Oh, that’s probably because of the Sinner’s Procession,” Mion told the other two. “Grandma was telling me about that yesterday – a bunch of the older ladies think Homura would make a good enough Sinner that it’s worth bringing it back this year. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last one was when I was still in elementary school.” 

“Oh, people like you enough to ask you to take a lead role in one of the village festivities? Good job, Homura!” Keiichi said, like a fool who didn’t know better. Then again, he didn’t, did he? He was new, after all. For that matter, Rena might not either, she’d moved away when she was still so young. 

“… Why would Oyashiro-sama judge Homura?” Rena said, quietly but seriously. Ah, scratch that possibility then. “I hadn’t heard anything to suggest that Homura had done something to merit Oyashiro-sama’s displeasure. Where is the sin?” 

“Ahahahaha, it’s not like that’s part of the selection these days, even if it ever was at all! From what I heard, everybody just thinks she looks the part,” Mion explained. 

Rika, mindful of the way Rena was talking, hit the brakes and pulled her bike to a stop. The rest of them followed suit; Mion cast a curious look her way, but Rika just glanced at Rena and Mion seemed to get the message. 

“Let’s not get too hasty,” Rika spoke up, keeping her attention on Rena. “Homura still has to agree to take part.” 

“Oyashiro-sama doesn’t like people who won’t take responsibility for their sins, does she?” Rena said, still with her serious tone; Mion tried to warn the other girl to stop, but Rena continued. “That’s the meaning of Watanagashi. I took responsibility for my sin. I came back. That’s why it didn’t happen to me. But Satoshi wouldn’t, and that’s why—” 

Rika, having already hopped off her bike, promptly interrupted Rena by trying to slap the other girl upside the head as best she was able. Which, considering the height disparity and the part where Rena was old enough to hit her growth spurt and Rika regrettably physically wasn’t, meant that Rika actually slapped the other girl about waist high. But it seemed to work. 

“Rika’s right,” Mion said. “Although somebody should really tell the people who were talking to Grandmother that. They were already assuming Homura’s agreement was a done deal.” 

“But Homura’s going to agree, right?” Rena said softly. “The Sinner is absolved, after all.” 

Mion glared at Rena, and thankfully Rena fell silent. Rika pedaled over towards Homura. 

“Don’t listen to her. Rena always gets a little worked up about Oyashiro-sama, even when she shouldn’t be,” Rika explained. “Oyashiro-sama won’t judge you if you decide not to participate. I don’t think she’d even take offense, and even if you did she’s really quite forgiving.” 

Homura abruptly turned to face her, and Rika could not help but recoil in the glare of the look the other girl suddenly gave her. 

“Let’s get moving again, shall we?” Mami said lightly, looking at them, before getting her bike moving again and getting ahead of the rest. 

Rika had to be thankful for that, because it did the trick; the tension seemed to… no, not drain away. It was still there, Rika could feel it. But while Mami hadn’t defused the tension, she had managed to _diffuse_ it; the silence was tense all the way to Okinomiya (and it wasn’t every day that all of them rode to Okinomiya in silence, was it?), but that was all it was: tense and silent. 

Upon reaching the building where Child Welfare was located, they stayed silent for a rather different reason. Despite the best efforts of the people who had made this place – who had gone so far as to set up a children’s park outside of it – the glass windows and bare concrete of the place never failed to come across as imposing, and Rika vaguely recalled that had been the case even before she’d come to associate this place with failure. 

As with every other fragment where the Club had seen fit to come here (and, in later fragments, where Rika had seen fit to come with them), they walked inside the glass doors, met with the people up front, and were led to another room to meet with one of the social workers here. The same one again, with her glasses and short hair. That was the saddest thing about this trip – even that never seemed to change. 

While Keiichi and the others first talked to and then started to argue with the official, Rika glanced around the sides of the room, looking for anything she could amuse herself with. It was a new room, at least, with bookcases around the sides. Huh, the office had their mascot on a shelf of one of the closest shelves, with their motto placard attached to it (“making children’s wishes come true”). Rika had forgotten about that mascot, but then it had been quite a few worlds since she had bothered to come here… wait. That was funny. Rika had _seen_ that mascot before, and not here. Recently, too. She was sure of it. But where? That mascot was distinctive with its white catlike body and long floppy ears, surely she— 

Wait. 

Rika _did_ know where she had seen that mascot before. 

But that only changed the question. 

Namely: why in Hanyuu’s name was the Child Welfare Office using the creature from the Sinner’s Procession effigies as a mascot? 

“—We will continue to offer as much assistance as possible to ensure that the father and daughter in the case can eventually rebuild their relationship into a loving and stable one,” the social worker said as Rika belated paid attention to how the actual appeal was going this time. 

“They are not father and daughter. They are uncle and niece,” Mami pointed out. 

This is a dead end. The Child Welfare Office will not act under any circumstances. 

Huh. Who had said that? It had been almost her own voice, but Rika had gotten the distinct sense it wasn’t just her own thoughts. A hallucination? Unlikely; Rika had succumbed to the Syndrome before, those hallucinations didn’t act like this. 

“I will pass on your appeal to the social worker in charge of Satoko’s case,” said the Welfare Office’s representative with an air of finality, breaking Rika’s chain of thought.. The worker got up, collected her things, and moved to leave, and all of them knew that the meeting was at an end. 

The walk back out to the front of the building was not a happy one. 

“Well, that was a total waste of time,” Keiichi said dejectedly after a little while, plopping himself onto a bench in front of the office. 

“I don’t think our feelings managed to get properly conveyed to the welfare officers,” Rena agreed, and if that cheery voice of Rena’s wasn’t as fake as Rika’s own child-voice Rika would eat a tray of choux ala crème. 

“That was like talking to a brick wall!” Mion agreed. 

There was silence for a moment, broken only by sobbing. 

Wait. Sobbing? 

Rika looked around discreetly. It sounded like it was coming from one of them. Not Rena, not Mion— oh. It was Mami? 

“What is wrong?” Homura asked her fellow transfer student. 

It took Mami a moment to recover enough composure to answer. 

“Everything!” Mami finally responded, her voice almost but not quite a yell. “We were all actually having fun with this club, and now not only is Satoko gone but we have to watch her like this. And Kyoko’s still gone, too! How can we have fun like this? We… we just have to sit here and watch?” 

The other girl broke back down into tears. Homura… to Rika’s eyes she looked almost stiff, until the other girl noticed Rika glancing at her and flashed Rika a glare. Instead it was Rena who moved to comfort Mami with a hug, followed by Mion giving Mami’s hand a reassuring squeeze a moment later. 

And that was how they stayed for a moment, a brief moment that seemed to stretch to infinity. 

“I’m sorry, Rika,” Keiichi said finally. “Despite my big mouth, there was nothing we could do.” 

Rika did not answer. 

Homura sat in the darkness of the dilapidated house they had converted into a campsite, lost in thought. 

The village wanted her to play a certain role in the Watanagashi festival, a role Homura frankly was not sure she would survive if she did. Tomorrow was next the village meeting. She needed to give an answer. 

She couldn’t say yes. She couldn’t _not_ say yes. 

What to do. What to do? 

Homura thought about it, in silence. 

To take the role of the Sinner was to willingly place herself in the hands of an angry village, to whatever end they sought for her. To _not_ take the role of the Sinner, though… that would be pissing off a bunch of villagers who were already angry with her. Right around the time of year when enemies of the villagers tended to disappear, at best. And given what she’d found out last weekend, she couldn’t even really run. She could get, what, to the passes to the next mountain range at best? Still Sonozaki territory. 

If she was going to die anyways, let it be on her own terms. 

And there was a part of her that thrilled at the thought of taking on that role, really. Homura knew she was a bad girl. Partly by nature, especially when she’d been younger and stupider. Partly by choice. There were things someone had to do, there was no reason for it not to be her, and sometimes she was the only person who could do those things. So she had. But if you were going to walk that path, you had to be able to look yourself in the eye and admit that was what you were doing. Homura sometimes thought that was what had done in Miss Miki, in the broader scope of things – the other girl had kept going on about being a hero of justice, after all. 

Maybe that was why Miss Miki had been replaced by a doppelganger. 

Maybe that, too, was why Rena had been replaced by a doppelganger? 

If Homura refused to take the role of Sinner here despite so richly deserving it… could she really claim not to be making the same mistake? And could she try to foist off the being the Sinner onto someone else and then look herself in the eye the next morning. 

No. 

Someone had to do it. There was no reason for it not to be her. Therefore she had to do it. Any other conclusion was cowardice. 

And… one of those impostors was definitely going to be around the festival preparations. Maybe she could do something with that. 

And so, Homura made her decision. 

Homura picked up the phone and, after a moment, made a call to Mion. 

“Tell your grandmother that I accept the village’s invitation to play the role of Sinner.” 

Even if it killed her. 

Rika sat at home in the lengthening shadows of the twilight, staring blankly at her full glass of wine with her head in her hands. 

How strange. Nothing to stop her from getting drunk, and for once she didn’t want to. 

What was it about this fragment, Rika wondered, that made even her coping mechanism feel like ashes in her mouth? 

Rika didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this. It was bad enough having to watch her friends kill each other over and over, but for the first time in a hundred fragments Rika had seen something to give her a little bit of hope and it looked like it was going to be ripped away. At this rate the three visiting girls were going to be ripped apart just like everyone else in the club – killed, if they were lucky. And even the firm ground she had stood on was getting washed away under her feet, supposedly centuries-old ceremonies suddenly getting added to the familiar rites as if by magic. But… what could she do? Ask Mami, maybe? She seemed to be holding up the best of the newcomers, maybe that would work. But… really? It was enough to make a girl want to drive a knife through her throat. 

It took a moment for Rika to drive the idea out of her head, and if she was going to be honest with herself she knew it was because part of her actually wanted to do it. But no. It would just leave everyone else here to their fate, and Satoko in particular would still have to suffer. Rika wasn’t that far gone. 

Wait. 

There was one other newcomer in this fragment, wasn’t there? One Rika had almost forgotten about. Rika hadn’t seen her for a few days, but presumably she would still be around if Rika went looking in the right place. 

Hopefully, anyways. 

It certainly wasn’t like Rika had any better ideas. 

Hanyuu wouldn’t be happy about it, admittedly. 

But then, Hanyuu didn’t even seem willing to try to help Rika this time around, did she? 

Maybe Madoka would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *has a chapter summary brainwave*
> 
> Me: There's one obvious thing I need to nail down if I go down this road, let me go noodling.
> 
> *checks single most obvious resource*
> 
> *reads first line*
> 
> *breaks down laughing*
> 
> Why do these two shows fit together so perfectly?


	10. Cnodax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “At first I thought fate was a contest between wills,  
> so I exerted myself so that I might win it.
> 
> Then I thought fate was an inevitable end,  
> so I resigned myself to endure the dark tragedy
> 
> But then I saw hope, and realized  
> that sometimes fate is but a trick of perspective.”  
> -Hellflower

“Here, have some bandages,” Miss Tomoe said. 

Homura glanced at the other girl questioningly. 

“For your arms and neck,” Miss Tomoe explained after a moment, taking out a mirror and offering it to Homura. “They’re starting to look ugly. Here, have a look.” 

Homura did so. Ugh, the other girl was right. The marks on her arms were noticeable and there was a scab visible on her neck as well. Which she had been scratching at, too. Luckily, even the distortion of her magical girl outfit that she had come to think of as a casual outfit covered both, and even the Mitakihara summer uniform conveniently came with a high enough neck to cover the latter. As for the former… well, Homura still seemed to have the winter uniform around. In a pinch she could claim that all her summer uniforms were dirty and wear that, it wasn’t like they would care at this school. 

“Thanks,” she said, accepting the other girl’s offer. “Although I am curious. I do still have my own band-aids; why offer yours to me?” 

“Because I had them out anyways and it was simpler this way,” Miss Tomoe explained. 

“You had them out anyways?” Homura repeated, confused. 

“I… seem to have done the same thing you have,” Mami explained, raising one of her arms and pulling back the sleeve to show a band-aid of her own. “You were right; there really is something about this place that makes you itch, isn’t there? And it’s not like we can use our magic to fix it right now, either. Though I suppose the weirdest thing is that part of me thinks that wouldn’t work on this even if we could.” 

Miss Tomoe packed up her medical supplies and turned to where they had stored their food. 

And then the other girl paused. 

“Wait,” Miss Tomoe said after a moment. “You already got breakfast started?” 

“You have been cooking for me for the last few days and I was up. I figured it was only fair,” Homura explained, flicking away a stray lock of hair. 

“This has to have been on the burner for a bit. How much sleep did you get last night, anyways?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“Define ‘sleep’,” Homura equivocated. “It was not for lack of trying, mind you.” 

She’d tried multiple times, but every time she’d just wound up lying awake in her sleeping bag thinking about the Sinner’s Procession. 

“That explains… uh, well, pardon my bluntness but you look like shit,” Miss Tomoe said. 

“I kind of feel like it, too,” Homura conceded. “I have a headache that just will not go away – which is kind of weird, really, what with us being what we are.” 

Miss Tomoe was silent for a moment… looking at Homura? 

“Here,” the other girl said finally, holding up a hand with the palm facing away from Homura. “May I?” 

“I… do not understand?” Homura asked after a moment, confused. 

“I was going to feel your forehead and see if it felt warm,” Miss Tomoe explained. 

“Oh,” Homura said. “… okay, sure, I guess?” 

Miss Tomoe did as she had promised, and after a moment pulled her hand away. 

“Yeah, I think that feels like it might be a fever,” Miss Tomoe said. “Do you… ugh, I hate to even suggest this, but maybe you should go ahead and brave the clinic again?” 

Homura thought about it. On the one hand, she really didn’t want to go back to that clinic, much less get examined by a doctor again. On the other hand… going to the clinic meant she didn’t have to worry about those two doppelgangers at school for a little longer, right? 

“I’ll go with you, if you want,” Miss Tomoe offered after a moment. “Frankly, if you’ve come down with something and it’s contagious I’ll probably wind up with it too if I haven’t already, maybe I can head that off at the pass.” 

That settled it – especially since it meant Miss Tomoe wouldn’t be going off to school alone when she might get ambushed by those doppelgangers en route. 

“I… would appreciate that, I think,” Homura got out after a moment. “Here, pass me the phone.” 

“I can make the call if you would like,” Miss Tomoe offered. 

“No, I think I should make it myself,” Homura decided after a moment. 

She didn’t really want to do it, but then sometimes you just had to push through the discomfort, didn’t you? 

It still took her a minute to take the phone off the hook and make the call, but make it she did. 

“Right, we should go,” Homura said a few minutes later, after they had finished their meal and packed and Homura had made a desperate stab at making herself somewhat more presentable. 

The sun was higher in the sky when they finally got out the door; the two of them had to have taken longer than Homura had thought, they had been ahead of schedule when she had finished making breakfast. Homura remained vigilant as they walked – she might be weary and feeling off, but that was no excuse, especially not when threats at best wouldn’t care about how she felt. At first it was possible motion in the trees – Homura had the nagging feeling that she was being watched, though if she was whoever was responsible was doing a good enough job hiding that she hadn’t been able to find them. As they got closer to town she relaxed a little on that, instead diverting that attention to the villagers. Hmm. She wasn’t nearly as much the center of attention as the last few days. Perhaps she had managed to pacify the locals by agreeing to take that role? Perhaps. But then, there was another, more mundane possibility – there seemed to simply be fewer people around this morning. Had the morning rush already gotten to their jobs? There weren’t cars around the same way, just vans and— wait a minute. 

Homura eyed the vans carefully, one by one. No, most of them seemed to be legit, but… aha! She had been right. The men in grey were back. (Well, not really grey, but close enough.) Hmm. It didn’t seem to— ah, wait, no, the van in question had just gotten moving to somewhere where it would have been harder to notice if Homura hadn’t been looking for it. Except the line of sight was off… 

Homura stopped time (weird, that seemed to make her headache worse) and checked behind her briefly. Aha! Her hunch had been right. There was another one of the vans in the distance behind her. Moving away. Which meant that she’d been right about feeling watched, because that van had to have come down the same road and the two of them were the only people taking it— 

Suddenly Homura’s fleeting moment of joy at being correct was overwhelmed with dread as she realized exactly what her logic was inevitably leading to. Great. Couldn’t she have been wrong for once? 

It made a girl want to strip and clean a few guns again. 

Ah well. It wasn’t like she could do that in public. Besides, she’d been doing that half the night after Miss Tomoe had fallen asleep. 

Instead Homura repressed her twitchiness all the way to the clinic. 

There were a few older ladies in the waiting room, presumably there for an early morning appointment. Homura listened to them as they sat, for lack of anything better to do. 

“Have you heard? Have you heard?” asked one. 

“About what?” asked the second one. 

“That woman who tried to kill Mr. Ryuuguu’s daughter, Rina Mamiya. She went missing from the jail last night,” the first woman explained. 

“I heard Mr. Ryuuguu went to the police personally and convinced them to drop the charges,” a third woman chimed in. 

“That would make sense,” the first woman said. “I hear he’s been spending money to impress her for months.” 

“I’ve heard about that woman,” the fourth and last woman spoke up. “She’s gotta be scamming the man, right? I’m sure he’s got money from something, he hasn’t worked in at least a year.” 

“Probably,” the second woman agreed with the fourth. “I don’t know why the daughter doesn’t step in, she’s in that club with the Sonozaki heir after all.” 

“It’s a matter of face,” the fourth woman disagreed. “Besides, the way I hear it she did try to step in and that’s why Ms. Mamiya tried to kill her.” 

“You have a point there,” the fourth woman conceded. “I’ll have to ask my husband about it when I get home; one of his friends has connections over in that part of Okinomiya. He hadn’t said anything about Ms. Mamoru showing back up, I suppose he just hadn’t heard yet.” 

“Or she’s taking a day or two off,” the third woman said. “The way I heard it the Ryuuguu’s daughter did pretty well for herself fighting back, Ms. Mamoru might be injured.” 

“Miss Akemi? Miss Tomoe?” the desk attendant called, earlier than Homura had expected. “The doctor will see you now.” 

“So early?” Homura asked in spite of herself; she’d expected to have to wait for a while. 

“Eight o’clock didn’t show, so we have an opening,” the desk clerk explained. 

“Fair enough,” Homura said, rising to her feet along with Miss Tomoe. 

It was a blessedly shorter walk to the actual examination room this time around, only a hallway and a half. (Seriously, what was it with this place?) None of those janitors, either, which was mildly reassuring. When they arrived at the room they found Dr. Irie already there; he gestured at them to take a seat, and they did so. 

“Well, there’s two faces I didn’t expect to see this morning. What happens to be the matter, ladies?” the doctor asked. 

“I felt rather ill last night – ill enough that I had trouble getting to sleep – and after checking this morning Miss Tomoe thinks I am running a fever,” Homura explained, she’d considered mentioning the itch, but gotten a bad feeling and decided against it. “I might be able to function in class despite all this, but just in case I am contagious I thought I should get it checked out.” 

“I seem to have a few of the same symptoms, and frankly if she’s come down with something I’ll probably get it too so I came with,” Miss Tomoe added. 

“Hmm. Well, I must say I agree with your decision – it wouldn’t do for the town’s Sinner to be unavailable because she’s sick in bed, would it?” Dr. Irie laughed. “Here, let me take a look.” 

“You know about that?” Homura asked, surprised, before her brain kicked in. “I suppose you would be as a villager…” 

“Honorary, really, I’ve only been here five years,” Dr. Irie smiled as he popped a thermometer in Homura’s mouth. “But in my case I knew because I’m on the festival planning committee. It goes with being the only doctor, you know?” 

Homura would have answered, but she had a thermometer in her mouth. Instead she fell quiet, and continued doing so as Dr. Irie did all the other usual steps. 

“Hmm,” Dr. Irie said after a moment. “You are in fact running a slight fever, Homura, 38 degrees. It’s probably just a cold, it’ll pass in a couple of days, wear your face mask if you’re worried about infecting anyone. I do have a shot that might help with the symptoms. Although, I am curious – what did you cut yourself on, Miss Tomoe?” 

“Bug bite,” the other girl replied easily. “We think we might have an infestation of something at the place we’re using as a campsite.” 

“I have had a couple of issues with that as well,” Homura conceded. 

“I see,” Dr. Irie said, before taking a moment to think. “I think I will recommend that shot, just in case.” 

Homura nodded and presented her arm. It felt almost routine – to think that there had been a day that she had actually been scared of needles! 

“If you’re still feeling like this in a couple of days, come back and see me,” Dr. Irie said when he had finished with both of them. “Especially you, Homura. Otherwise I’ll see you two at Watanagashi.” 

_Hopefully,_ Homura added in the privacy of her own mind. 

She let none of it hit her face, of course. Instead she nodded and left with Miss Tomoe. 

“Back to the campsite, I suppose?” Miss Tomoe asked. 

“I am inclined to concur,” Homura replied after a second to gather her thoughts. “I think I should see if I can actually get some sleep and see if I am feeling well enough to head in to school at lunch.” 

To Homura’s surprise, the plan actually worked. She had thought that her worries would still keep her awake, but by the time they were outside the limits of the village proper she was having trouble staying upright; she was barely able to get inside and crawl into her sleeping bag before collapsing from exhaustion and falling asleep. When the alarm clock rang a few hours later, Homura was split between relief that Mami had remembered to set it and annoyance at being woken up so soon – especially since the clock had woken her out of a dream. 

Homura pushed away the tiredness and sat up. Was she functional enough to go to class? _Yes,_ she decided after a moment, and confirmed that to Miss Tomoe when the other girl asked her about it a few moments later. 

The two of them arrived at the school only a few minutes before lunch. 

They soon realized that they would not be the only people expected to be absent who had made it back to school before lunch. 

“Oh hey, look!” Miss Tomoe said as they put their outside shoes up, pointing at one of the lockers. 

Homura did so. 

Oh hey, that was Satoko’s locker wasn’t it? And it also had shoes in it. 

Well, maybe the club’s appeal yesterday had done some good after all. 

They headed to the classroom just as the principal rang the lunch bell, and for a moment Homura’s dread at seeing the fake Rika and Rena was drowned out by the sight of a head of familiar pale blond hair. The other local members of the club, real and otherwise, were arrayed in front of the other girl; they were all too busy for a moment to notice the two of them standing in the doorway. 

“You all appealed to Child Welfare on my behalf?” Satoko said… but was that indignation instead of relief in her voice? “Really, really? That’s two days now that Child Welfare has sent people over to our house. It caused my uncle and I no end of fuss! Such an uproar! Really, it was just a misunderstanding.” 

“Well, misunderstanding or not I’m glad you’re okay, Satoko” Miss Tomoe said, drawing a start from the other girl – she hadn’t noticed the two of them standing behind her. 

“Oh hey, you two are back too!” Mion said as she noticed the two of them in the doorway. 

“Yeah, we decided after visiting the clinic and resting a couple of hours that we were feeling good enough to come back for the second half of the day,” Miss Tomoe explained. “Chie-sensei should already know, we called ahead.” 

“I think we have to pass on any club activities today, though,” Homura added. 

“Fair enough,” Mion replied. 

“Here, pull up some desks,” Keiichi said. 

“I think we’ll pull ours a little further away, just in case,” Miss Tomoe said. 

“What did Rena pack for lunch, she wonders, she wonders?” Rena said as they all finished pulling the desks together and started proceeding to pull out their lunches. “Oh, but of course! Look! It’s omurice!” 

“That’s our Rena!” Satoko said reassuringly. “With skills like those you’ll be beating men off with a stick!” 

“Me, a bride?” Rena replied before dissolving into a puddle of “hau” at the thought. 

As she did so, Keiichi reached over to give Satoko a comforting headpat. 

Except… 

For a second, it was like Homura was watching things in slow motion. One moment, Keiichi was still headpatting Satoko. The next, something seemed to visibly give in Satoko’s face. The next, the younger girl gave out a shrill “NO!” and shoved Keiichi away from her. 

Too far away from her. 

Impossibly far away from her. 

Normal humans couldn’t shove a boy half again their size halfway across the room. 

Oh. 

Oh no. 

Keiichi moved to try to comfort Satoko again, but Homura was already on her way to the bathroom even before she heard the distinctive sound of someone vomiting. 

She needed space and time to think. 

That was three, now. 

Three doppelgangers out of their little club. 

At this rate, how much longer before all of them had been killed and replaced? A week? A day? 

Or… had everyone here been a doppelganger from the start? Was that why every magical girl who came here never returned? 

Homura wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t rule it out. 

Someone had to get the word out. 

To the rest of the village itself, and failing that to the outer world so no one else would get trapped here. 

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Who? She couldn’t be sure any of the locals were trustworthy. Kyoko was missing, presumably dead. Madoka, achingly, had been gone for far too long to have come here. So was Miss Miki, despite the best efforts of one of those doppelgangers to try to fool Homura into thinking that blue-haired girl was somehow alive. Homura herself was a dead girl walking (and really, what had ever made her think there was an acceptable option other than playing the Sinner, if there was to be a sacrifice let it be here and yet when push came to shove she’d still nearly shied away from going through with it). But that meant that, logically, there was only one of them left who could get the word out about what was going on in this place: Miss Tomoe. As much as Homura disliked the idea… even after double-checking, there was simply no one else left. That meant Miss Tomoe had to survive. A week ago Homura would never have imagined that thought running through her head. Even now… but even after double-checking, there was simply no one else left. The conclusion held. Miss Tomoe had to survive. 

Could Homura do enough to ensure that? 

Well, she had no idea how to take down whatever effect had prevented them from leaving the area on Sunday. But preventing the doppelgangers from getting to Mami? That… that she could do, if she had the skill and the guts. 

All she had to do was get the doppelgangers first. 

Yes. 

If the doppelgangers were already dead, they wouldn’t be able to deal with Miss Tomoe. 

But… there seemed to be several of them. How could Homura get all of them? 

Well… hunting down all of the known ones would be a good start. 

And there was another possibility, too, now that Homura thought about it. One of the scrapbooks Takano had given them… it had mentioned something about a queen parasite, hadn’t it? If the old legends were actually referring to the doppelgangers and Takano hadn’t known that, then maybe that queen theory applied to the doppelgangers instead – there was one head doppelganger, and maybe if you killed it all the other doppelgangers would stop as well. 

And given the village power structure and both that scrapbook and one of the other ones, Homura could make a pretty educated guess about which family that queen doppelganger would be associated with. 

And she knew that the last surviving member of that family was in fact a doppelganger. 

And because of the last festival practice Homura had a pretty good idea of where that queen doppelganger would be on Saturday afternoon. 

And because she would need to be in the area anyways it wouldn’t seem too amiss if she was around there too. 

Yes. 

Yes, that was the way. 

Homura knew what she could do. 

Homura knew what she needed to do. 

She was going to kill Rika Furude. 

It had been two hours since she’d started looking, and Rika had yet to find the entity she was looking for. 

At least the one upside of being stuck in this endless June was that the days were long this time of year. 

Also, thankfully, she’d thought to pack and make dinner beforehand. 

Actually, now that Rika thought about it that sounded like a good idea right now, didn’t it? She glanced around the trees of the forest until she saw a suitable clearing – with a log to sit on, no less – then opened what she had fixed and started to eat. 

Ah, better. Her legs had been starting to get tired, too. 

As her food vanished down her mouth with all haste (hunger always did season ohagi well, didn’t it?), Rika glanced around. Hmm. She only had so long to search this loop – worst case she would die on Monday, and that would leave her only the rest of today plus tomorrow and maybe part of Saturday to look for the pink-haired goddess. Maybe a more methodical search was in order. Where would it be best to search next? She’d already checked the two spots she’d actually seen Madoka before – both the spot by the Shrine itself and that footbridge over by where the new girls were staying. She’d also checked the rest of the area around that old abandoned subdivision, and the area around the swamp itself, just in case. No sign. Where would the other goddess be staying, then? She seemed to be on bad terms with Hanyuu, so probably she’d be staying relatively far away from the village. There was only one more local landmark to check near but outside Hinamizawa, and that was where Rika was headed next. Well, unless Madoka had gone down to the old quarry for some reason. Hopefully not. If that was where Madoka had gone Rika’s idea had been dead on arrival – going down that way was a fast way to an early death. 

After a little while Rika turned the last corner before the suspension bridge over the gorge, and her heart fell. There was no sign of the shape she was looking for there. No white dress, no long pink hair. 

For a moment Rika felt the urge to admit defeat and trudge home. She suppressed it. No. She would _not_ give up. Not now. Not yet. After this world, maybe. But not today. 

But still… now Rika was going to have to search the forest, maybe for hours, and she really wasn’t looking forward to that. 

Unless the other girl was in Okinomiya? After a moment’s thought, Rika doubted it; if Madoka had been over in the big city, she would have probably shown up when they had made their appeal to the Child Welfare Office yesterday. 

Which left the forest. Joy. 

Where to start? 

Maybe she’d had the right idea going for the gorge and the other goddess just hadn’t been in the most obvious spot? 

Probably not, but at least it was a starting point. 

Rika turned to start heading towards her right… and stopped. Something had caught her eye. 

She crossed over to the other side of the road to take a closer look. 

Hmm. Yes, someone had stepped on or otherwise damaged a bush. Rika glanced around on the ground. Much of the ground was covered with pine needles, but… yes, there were signs of footprints on the ground. And now that Rika looked, there was a spot on the bush where a single long, reddish piece of hair had gotten stuck. 

Promising. 

Rika struck out into the woods, slowly passing from tree to tree as she kept her eyes out. Still no dice. Except… 

Huh. That was odd. That copse of trees at the peak of the ridge up ahead… had Rika ever actually seen it before? The pines bent outwards and upwards and in, almost like they were threads twining upwards into a rope. The effect was distinctive enough to be memorable, and yet despite having traipsed through these woods quite a few times before she had somehow always managed to miss it. 

Well, she wouldn’t make that mistake again. Rika made a note to herself of the area she had noticed… 

And then she paused. 

This was something distinctive that she should have noticed before and yet hadn’t. This… was this like that procession? Something else that had “always been there” and yet Rika had never encountered it in any other timeline? For that matter, Rika still had the nasty sneaking suspicion something similar was going on with her family’s teahouse, too. Was this another thing like that? 

Well, it couldn’t be exactly like the other two. These trees weren’t trying to tell Rika how familiar they were. 

Hmm. 

Perhaps a closer look was in order. 

Rika headed up the hillock, more slowly than she might have otherwise. The roots of the trees demanded it; they were tightly intertwined in a dense mass, protruding through the forest floor in a way that ordinary pine trees simply didn’t. Now that Rika could take a closer look she could see that the trunks were different, too: thin and black, and with bark less flaky than usual. Fewer needles, too, though she couldn’t have told that from the carpet of dropped needles on the forest floor. 

It took a little while to make her way through the trees, but eventually Rika reached the summit – well, subsummit, really, compared to the actual mountains, but still. There was a clearing there, though instead of grass the ground was mossy rock. 

And then, suddenly, the scenery seemed to shift. 

The clearing was still there, but it looked different. Or, perhaps more accurately, no longer looked different – the pine trees looked like normal pine trees. 

Or did they? No. Both were there at the same time. It was just a matter of how you looked. 

“Ah, Rika Furude. I thought you might come in the end,” a voice said behind Rika. “I believe you were looking for me?” 

Rika had heard that voice before, though not in a little while. 

And that meant she had found what she was looking for, didn’t it? 

“I hope I made myself easy enough to find,” said the girl’s voice. 

Rika turned around, and there the visiting goddess was, all yellow eyes and white dress and long pink hair with sidetails. 

“I am curious, though,” Madoka said. “Why?” 

“I am going to die soon,” Rika said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know exactly when or exactly how just yet, but I do know the general shape of things. I can see that death looming, like the moon’s reflection in the water’s surface, and that moon is nearly full. I once thought some of the people I knew from around here might be able to help, but that’s never worked. I thought maybe one of the girls you came here with might be able to help, too, but at this point I think they’ll be lucky to escape themselves. I suppose you probably can’t help either, but… you’re the last possibility I see, and when looking at death’s reflection perhaps a pebble thrown into the well of fate will not be thrown in vain? And at this point… even if not, at least maybe you might know what in hell is going on around here. I thought I knew, once, but things just aren’t making sense anymore. For that matter, I’m not even sure why those three girls even came here, it’s not like anyone new ever comes here except Keiichi.” 

“You… is this an attempt at humor? It has been a while since someone told me a joke,” Madoka replied. 

“What part of what I just told you makes you think I was joking?” Rika asked exasperatedly. 

“I mean, you were asking one of those questions where you already know the answer and were asking for humorous effect, right?” Madoka asked. 

Rika just stared at the goddess blankly. 

After a little while, realization seemed to set in. 

“You really don’t know?” Madoka asked Rika, yellow eyes staring at her piercingly. “I thought you knew. You can’t possibly not know, can you?” 

“Don’t know _what_?” Rika asked cautiously. 

“Why are Homura Akemi, Kyoko Sakura, and Mami Tomoe here in your village of Hinamizawa?” Madoka explained. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re magical girls, Rika Furude. Just like you.”


	11. Divinitas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Every actress plays their part.  
> That is the form of the tragedy.
> 
> Every role spirals to its fate.  
> That is the essence of the tragedy.
> 
> But then, what steps should an actress take  
> If they want no part in the tragedy?”
> 
> \- Hellflower

_What?_

No, that couldn’t be right. If she was a magical girl then Rika would have the power to fix all this, not be stuck getting killed over and over. That was what magical girls did, right? In the stories— 

_Rika was standing on the shore of a great body of water._

_The ocean? No, a mountain lake. There was no ice on the water, despite the chill wind and grey skies. There were villages and buildings visible in the distance, fires lit inside, all in the old style. Quite old. Old even by comparison to the older buildings in Hinamizawa. But they did not strike her as amiss._

_Rika’s clothes should have been no real protection against the biting wind; they’d taken a form very similar to what her family would wear as part of their duties, and a summer outfit at that. And yet they were._

_She sighed. She could not afford to pay attention to the scenery, as nice as it was._

_Rika turned, hoisting her black scythe and ignoring the shifting of her headdress. There it was, looming over the water, higher than her nightmares._

_Rika raised her scythe and took her stance, pushing down the grief as she prepared to face the monster._

_The monster that had once been her friend._

—Rika gasped. That had been vivid. Too vivid. 

“You remember, don’t you?” Madoka smiled. 

Rika paused for a moment. No, that had just been a dream, hadn’t it? 

Hadn’t it? 

Except… there had also been that incident with the mirror. 

The goddess couldn’t be right. 

Could she? 

“Maybe,” Rika finally answered, warily. “It could just be a dream, but…” 

“What does that dream tell you about magical girls?” Madoka asked. 

Rika considered the question for a moment. 

“If it was true, it would say that magical girls exist, and that they can transform into monsters that other magical girls have to fight,” Rika replied. 

“Correct,” Madoka said. “And you are one. I… wasn’t actually sure, until you came here. But you are. And… you’re not the only one around here, I don’t think. Even before the girls I once knew arrived.” 

“So, then… what is going on around here?” Rika asked. 

“I don’t know,” Madoka said simply. 

“You don’t know?” Rika repeated, half-incredulously. “You are a goddess, right?” 

“Yes, and yet,” Madoka smiled wanly, “There was a day, Rika Furude, a short while ago that feels like an eternity – or maybe it’s the other way around – that I was a young girl, not much older than you. I knew all of the other girls who came to visit here; most of them were my friends, though I didn’t really realize how loyal one of them was at the time. I got to watch them all struggle against the magical girl system, got to watch them all fail and die or fall. I couldn’t stand it. And in the end, by grace and fate, I was able to do something about it. I guess you could say I forged myself into something greater – the Law of Cycles. A way out, where no magical girl would ever have to succumb to despair. And it spread across the entire world, maybe even further, and to other versions of the same. Everywhere except one particular world… and here.” 

“Here?” Rika asked. 

“There’s a bubble of a few kilometers where the Law of Cycles I laid down simply… doesn’t touch,” Madoka explained. “I don’t know why. All I know is that it’s centered on this very village. So when all of the surviving magical girls who had once been my friends decided to investigate this place on their own, I tagged along. You could say our interests are in alignment, I suppose.” 

“What have you learned?” Rika asked. 

“Less than I had hoped,” the goddess admitted. “Something is going on around here, something that interferes with my duty, but I knew that already. Something involving magical girls. And two other things. First, it interferes with the landscape.” 

Rika’s mind raced at the words, thinking about everything she had seen lately. 

“Like my family’s teahouse?” she asked. 

“Well— actually, yes, but that wasn’t the object example I had in mind,” Madoka replied. “Look around you.” 

“The odd trees?” Rika replied, looking for confirmation. 

“Yes,” Madoka said. “They weren’t like that originally. Actually they weren’t for quite a while, they didn’t get like this until a couple of days after I started… camping here, for lack of a better word. And I didn’t do that until your Hanyuu chased me away from the village proper. But it’s not just that. These trees… I recognize them. You remember that you are a magical girl; do you know the fate of all magical girls?” 

“They transform into monsters,” Rika replied, remembering the memory that had finally surfaced. “Witches, I believe they were called?” 

“Correct,” Madoka replied. “Or it was, anyways. That was my wish, to change that so that a Puella Magi could have a peaceful death. And yet… these trees remind me of the very first Witch whose transformation I prevented. My own. And then I noticed that it was not the only such place here.” 

“The teahouse,” Rika extrapolated. “The teahouse that has always been there and yet it feels like I’d never seen it before.” 

“Yes,” Madoka confirmed. “And not just it, either. You know that footbridge south of town? The one you were around when you saw me arguing with your Hanyuu? That place, too.” 

Hmm. That made sense; Rika vaguely remembered having similar misgivings about that place when she had seen it. Especially given how ornate it was, and how well-maintained. 

“They’re not quite the same, though,” Madoka continued. “You are familiar with the phenomenon of a Witch’s barrier?” 

“I… think so. That’s the sort of otherworld that a Witch generates and that she lives in, right?” Rika asked. 

“Indeed,” Madoka confirmed. “While this place seems to be based on the form of the Witch I would have become, those two sites seem to instead be based on the barriers of the Witches that Mami Tomoe and Kyoko Sakura would have turned into. I’m not sure why; I suspect it had to do either with my nature as the Law of Cycles or because of how the barrier of my own Witch would have functioned. I’m also not sure why Homura seems immune to the effect.” 

Rika thought about it for a moment, and then it hit her. 

“But that’s obvious, isn’t it?” she asked excitedly. 

Madoka just looked at her, so Rika continued. 

“There’s one other thing this world that’s given me the same kind of sense as that teahouse or that bridge – in fact, it’s the one that convinced me to start trying to figure out what was going on. It’s just not a place, it’s an event. A festival rite that supposedly dates back centuries and yet I’m sure I’ve never heard of it before.” 

Madoka thought about that for a second. 

“The Sinner’s Procession,” she realized. 

“Exactly,” Rika agreed. 

“I don’t know,” Madoka said. “It doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to the Witch that Homura would have become? But perhaps it is I who am blind.” 

“All I know is that it feels the same way that the other two places you mentioned do, and I’m pretty sure it’s never been part of the festival before,” Rika shrugged. 

Madoka considered that. “Perhaps you are correct. Or perhaps you are not? I cannot tell. It also doesn’t help tell me what’s going on. There should be an effect, but I cannot tell what. I’m not even sure if there are any other such places that predate my friends’ arrival here. 

“Uhh…” Rika said hesitantly as something occurred to her. “I… think I may have run across another such place?” 

Madoka looked at her with interest. 

“There’s a room beneath the shrine in the middle of town that I’ve never seen before?” Rika explained. “I’ve never had reason to see it before, though – it’s under a trapdoor – so I can’t say whether or not it’s actually new. The style is weird at any rate; it’s not traditional at all, all white columns and the walls were decorated with these painted tile designs I’ve never seen before.” 

“I’ve stayed well away from the home of a local deity who appears uncomfortable with my presence, so I can’t say I’ve seen it,” Madoka replied. “Although I am curious. Painted tile designs?” 

“Yeah, lots of little irregularly shaped tiles spread out on the wall so that they made something like a painting,” Rika explained. “Not a traditional painting, either. Which is the other weird thing, really. That room leads to another room, and that second room is basically just a noh stage.” 

“Irregularly shaped tiles making a picture… you mean a mosaic?” Madoka asked Rika. 

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Rika vacillated. 

Madoka spread out her hands, and an image seemed to form between them – sure enough, an image of another picture formed of irregular tiles, and it looked like the same kind of art, too. 

“Yeah, that’s about what they looked like. You’ve seen these before?” Rika asked. 

“There’s magical girls across all of time and space,” Madoka explained. “I’ve tried to offer peace to all of them. That kind of artwork was common among the ancient Romans, two thousand years ago.” 

“Which makes it rather strange that it would appear here, then, I suppose,” Rika said, and then cringed – she hadn’t really needed to explain the obvious, had she? 

“Especially with the traditional room behind it,” Madoka agreed. 

And now that Rika thought about it, it was really quite weird that that noh stage had been underground, wasn’t it? And also what had been in it… 

“Actually, there’s something else about that underground space that I wonder about. That noh stage? It had a whole bunch of boxes of papers. Children’s drawings. I actually have one of them; it got stuck to me when I was leaving the place, and apparently it got in my backpack with my homework and I keep forgetting to take it out.” 

Rika reached into her bag, pulled the thing out, and showed it to Madoka. 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Madoka said. “I think this is a picture of a magical girl? Yes, that should be it – this is the girl, and that’s the Witch she would have become.” 

Rika glanced at the girl – short blond hair, wearing a black-and-green dress and a hat like Rena’s beret and carrying a strange staff – and the mass of gears and gauze in the corner. 

“I can’t tell who she is, though,” Madoka continued. 

“You can’t?” Rika asked, confused. 

“No, I can’t,” Madoka confirmed with a sigh. “Which makes no sense, because I am the goddess of all magical girls and should be able to tell who I will need to tend to. But I can’t. You’re the only person from around here that I am sure is a Puella Magi, and I’m not even sure why I was so sure about you.” She paused. “I think there’s at least one other in that after-school club you’re in, but I’m not sure.” 

Rika pondered the goddess’s words for a moment, but found no purchase. 

“Have you noticed anything else?” she asked Madoka finally. 

“Only one other thing, really.” Madoka said. “Some strange effect. It feels like some sort of creeping corrosion, and seems to effect certain people here in the village. And… I think Homura has been affected as well.” 

“Oh, I know that one,” Rika smiled. “There’s a local sickness native to the region, see? A ‘pathogen’, that’s what the people at the clinic call it, or sometimes Hinamizawa Syndrome; in the local lore we call it Oyashiro-sama’s Curse. Usually the body’s immune system holds it in check, but sometimes under the wrong circumstances or if you get too far away from the village you get sick. You get paranoid, you start seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, and if you’re not careful you’ll scratch yourself until you bleed to death. It’s treatable, now; that’s what Satoko’s medicine is for.” 

Madoka considered her words for a moment, and then spoke. 

“No.” 

“No?” Rika asked, confused and almost angry. 

“It is not just a pathogen,” Madoka explained. “I can sense it, see? And if it was just a bacteria or virus I wouldn’t be able to do that. There has to be more to it than that. And in this case I think I might have an inkling as to what. You said the local lore calls this pathogen “Oyashiro-sama’s Curse”? 

“Yes,” Rika confirmed. “It’s not actually Oyashiro-sama’s doing, though, I don’t think – she didn’t intend it, at any rate.” 

“There might be a grain of truth to the lore, then,” Madoka mused. “The Kyubeys once said that if magical girls were born from wishes then Witches were born from curses. I think there might be a connection; certainly, something about the feeling of this pathogen keeps reminding me of the state of every Soul Gem I crushed.” 

“Soul Gem you crushed?” Rika asked, once again confused. 

“You remember what a Soul Gem is, right?” Madoka asked. 

Rika had to think about it for a moment, but then it came to her. “… That’s the gem that is created when a magical girl makes her wish, yes?” 

“There’s a little more to it than that, but yes,” Madoka confirmed. “In order to prevent Puella Magi from transforming into Witches, I have to crush their Soul Gem as part of the process.” 

“I see,” Rika replied, still a little dubious. 

“That said, I have a question of my own,” Madoka said. “You did not seem surprised when I mentioned that I thought Homura was affected.” 

“No, I’d already suspected as much,” Rika said. “Not just her, too, I’ll bet Shion is as well – and Satoko, but that’s just because that man won’t let her take her medicine.” 

“There is something in the web of cause and effect that I can’t quite parse, and it seems to relate to that,” Madoka said. “When did you first start suspecting that Homura was affected?” 

“I...” Rika paused for a moment. She had to think. When had Homura really started to act like she was starting to succumb? What had set her off? Takano’s scrapbooks? No… she’d seemed reasonably okay during karuta on Sunday. Whatever it was, it had happened between then and Tuesday or so… but that still left too many candidates. “I’m not sure. It might have been finding that girl who reminded Homura and Mami of their friend, it might have been whenever Homura was asked to participate in the Sinner’s Procession, it might have been something else. At any rate I first noticed it… definitely by Tuesday, probably when I was talking to Homura at the end of school on Monday?” 

Madoka considered Rika’s words. 

“What were you talking with her about?” the goddess asked finally. 

“Uh… well…” Rika delayed. How did she want to phrase this, anyways? Ah. “You are a goddess. Can you tell… what I am? What I’ve been through?” 

“Yes. A recursion of time,” Madoka confirmed. “You are a child, and have been a child for a very long time. I can see this. It is not the first time I have seen such a thing.” 

“Well, I got it into my head that Homura might be some version of the same thing,” Rika explained unsteadily. “She seems to be able to interact with this kind of frozen time thing that Hanyuu can do, see? So I asked her about it. Asked her whether she had been time traveling. And she got this look on her face… I’ve seen that look before. It’s like how Keiichi gets… well, probably tomorrow or the day afterwards, actually. It’s a bad sign. Usually, people who get like that succumb to the syndrome.” 

“I see,” Madoka said before losing herself in thought for a moment. 

At length the goddess reemerged from her thoughts. “You probably cut deeper with those words than you knew, Rika Furude. You were, in fact, correct. Twice over, actually.” 

Rika’s heart soared. She’d been right. She’d been right! She’d actually found someone like her. Someone who might actually understand. But… 

“What do you mean by ‘twice over’?” she asked. 

“My very best friend is, indeed, a time traveler in much the same sense that you are,” Madoka explained. “Someone who repeatedly looped backwards in time in order to attempt to prevent an event. When I said I had seen such a thing before, she was exactly who I meant. But she and both of her friends are also time travelers in a far more prosaic sense. I think? I’m not entirely sure. I can’t tell. You know how I mentioned there seemed to be something affecting this area? Someone is backwards in time, but I can’t tell whether it’s my friends or the town itself. But perhaps it does not matter? My friends were born in a future era, and they’ve been trying to keep that fact secret ever since they arrived.” 

Rika considered the implications of that. 

“So when I asked Homura if she was a time traveler…” she trailed off. 

“Homura concluded that she had blown their cover,” Madoka confirmed. “There’s something more to it than that, but I can’t tell what.” 

Rika thought about that for a moment. 

And the more she did, the more her stomach sank. 

She’d been right, she’d been right and by her own action she might have lost the first person she’d ever met who might actually have been able to understand her situation. She’d reached out and in so doing doomed Homura to that ugly fate! Why? Why could she only make things worse? Why… 

At length, Rika mastered herself. This wasn’t going to help. And yet… 

“I… I want to save myself and my friends,” Rika finally admitted, shakily. “All of them. Even the ones who only just got here. And… I’m not sure it can be done… I’ve never had any luck, but…” 

Rika paused, fighting back tears she hadn’t realized she’d been suppressing. 

“Can you help me?’ 

Madoka paused for a moment, her eyes far away. 

“I never could stand to watch girls cry,” she said finally. “And yet… can I? Maybe. I think I could perhaps be able to help you. But if so I’ll need you in turn to help me. I’ll need you to lend me your hands.” 

Well, it might be a long shot, but a long shot was better than no shot, wasn’t it? 

“I don’t think I really have a choice,” Rika admitted. “What do you need me to do?” 

“I’m… not entirely sure,” Madoka admitted. “But I’m pretty sure about two steps. First… you are the miko of Hanyuu, who is known as Oyashiro-sama, yes?” 

“Yes,” Rika confirmed. 

“If we’re going to fix this, I think I need you to convince her to actually talk to me. Or at least get her to the same place? I can’t tell, cause and effect is hard sometimes.” 

“And the second?” Rika asked. 

“There’s one of the girls in particular who I think the two of us might be able to get through to,” Madoka explained. “That very same Homura Akemi. As for how… you mentioned some kind of medicine for this sickness that is not a sickness?” 

“Yes. It works, too,” Rika clarified. “Satoko is living proof of that. But the problem is that it comes in syringes and that tends to freak out anyone who really needs it. Hanyuu knows I’ve tried; I’ve never managed to get anyone to take it, let alone inject them myself.” 

“No, I suppose not,” Madoka mused. “But I think I might be able to. We’ll need a big piece of paper and something to draw on it.” 

“I… well, I don’t really get it but I guess that’s why I’m trusting you,” Rika said after a moment. “We’ll need to make sure we do this somewhere where Homura is going to go, though.” 

“Oh, that’s not an issue,” Madoka smiled. “That’s easy. We won’t have to worry about finding Homura.” 

“… Why not?” Rika asked. 

“She’s coming for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, remember the other half of the crossover? Because I certainly did.
> 
> *innocent smile*


	12. Crux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope. A potent thing, a light in the darkness;  
> How could one go on without it?
> 
> Hope. A pretty thing, swaying like gossamer in the wind.  
> How could one go on without it?
> 
> Hope. An absent thing, a distant memory.  
> Tell me... how does one go on without it?
> 
> \- Hellflower

Homura glanced around what would be the festival grounds furtively. 

She’d tried to get close to the Rika-thing a few times now, with no success. She’d considered cornering it at school, but decided against it – that thing might be able to move through her time stop, and she hadn’t had any luck at either catching it alone or finding a place where a bomb wouldn’t have collateral damage. What she _had_ tried doing was getting the Rika-thing while it was asleep. To no avail. The first night, she’d tried to sneak in but nearly run into some of those grey-suited men and turned back; for whatever reason they seemed to infest that area. The second night she’d decided to go ahead and stop time to sneak in unseen… only to find that Rika was no longer there. Either her worst fears had been right or that thing had gotten advanced warning, and judging from past experience the former was a safer assumption. 

Certainly the worst had been right when it came to the doppelgangers. They’d gotten Keiichi, now, too. The new kid. A pity his parents had brought him to this place, now they’d gotten him too, the impostor had slipped and revealed itself during lunchtime. (Although… something didn’t quite add up? It had looked like he had blacked out for a few moments before he’d started ranting.) 

At this rate, how much longer did Mami have before they got her, too? 

No, Homura had to succeed and she had to succeed now. 

She couldn’t count on being able to sneak up on the Rika-thing and get a bullet into her. No. The thing would be able to get out of the way. Unless Homura got the drop on her mundanely and managed to get a bullet in her brain that way? No, still risky. The thing might be able to stop time herself just like Homura could. No, it had to be something that the thing wouldn’t see coming up until the moment it hit her. A well-placed bullet from behind might do the trick, admittedly. But there was a better way, wasn’t there? 

After all, Homura reflected, it wasn’t like she’d been making pipe bombs and collecting explosives for nothing. 

Besides, that would leave all of her remaining power for the getaway. Which wasn’t a terrible thing, she was running lower than she would have liked after her last two excursions. 

Unfortunately, that meant she would need to sneak in the hard way. 

Homura scanned the grounds again, and the treeline as well. Ah, look, there they were. The men in grey. They were everywhere around here, weren’t they? If you knew to look for them, anyways. Look at a street corner? There they were. Look at a store? Check around the corner, there they were. Walking down the road and you didn’t see them? That just meant they were behind you. Honestly, there was probably one watching Homura right now and she just hadn’t spotted him… not anywhere she could see, but that was the issue, wasn’t it? Honestly she would just have to hope, at this point not doing so would scupper the operation. The worst of it was that they seemed to cluster around the Rika-thing, too. Hmm. Could they be doppelgangers themselves? Hmm. Homura had her doubts. If anything, she almost wondered if they were watching the doppelgangers in some fashion. After all, there had been a bunch of them around the clinic, and it was a theory from the nurse at the clinic that had tipped her off about the Rika-thing being the queen doppelganger in the first place. Maybe she could contact them and ally with them? 

Homura thought about that for a second and then cleared her head. No. Those men gave her the creeps. Besides, like as not they would silence her for knowing too much, they had that kind of feel to them. Hell, maybe they had— no, that was an unproductive train of thought. Homura needed to keep her head straight. Ugh. It was getting harder, too. It felt like intrusive thoughts – that was what those old psych books had called them, yes? That experience Homura was familiar with, though it wasn’t nearly as bad these days as it had been. This was similar but also different, and more different than similar. And it was getting more frequent and harder to deal with. Worrisome. Also another reason to get this over with sooner rather than later, while she was still in possession of her faculties. 

Hmm. 

How to dodge the attention of both the men in grey and the villagers? 

Ideally, blend in with the crowd, but Homura was something of a minor celebrity around the older villagers at this point. Alternately, take to the woods, but the men in grey seemed to be there and by all accounts there were some traps there as well. Stopping time was right out, that might tip off her target. 

What to do? 

Well, a disguise might work. It didn’t matter if she was seen if nobody recognized her when they did so. It would be harder in a small insular town like this, but it still might work. But how to change her appearance so she— 

Urgh. 

Ugh. 

No. 

… Maybe? 

_Is there any other way?_ Homura asked herself. 

Well, yes, given enough time and effort. But she was on a schedule, and she wasn’t sure she could pull off a more elaborate disguise. 

Ugh. 

Ah, well. 

Nothing for it. Homura ducked into a shadowy spot, checking for watching eyes, and then got to work. She hadn’t done this in ages, but her hands still remembered. Slowly, surely, she worked. One side of her hair, then the other. After a minute she was done, and pulled out a mirror to examine her handiwork. Yes, done. The braids. Ugh, how she hated those braids. How she hated that she’d ever been stupid enough to wear them. But for today… well, it was only for a little while. With any luck everyone would avert their eyes. 

Now, it was time for the other ugly part. Thankfully, she’d stored them in her shield, just in case. Then again, she’d stored everything in her shield at this point, hadn’t she? Except what she needed to keep out for appearances. Well, technically not everything she needed for appearances, because this qualified, didn’t it? At any rate, she pulled out her old glasses and put them on. Still better than trying to deal with contacts had been that one time. Of course, the issue was that now she didn’t need them and was thus having difficulty seeing. Ah well, still nothing for it. 

To complete the appearance she scuffed a little dirt onto her face and adopted a hunched, cringing posture. Then she headed out into the preparations. 

Perfect. Nobody recognized her. 

Homura wove through the street in front of the shrine, where people were setting up stalls for tomorrow, and cringed every step of the way. At first she tried to suppress it, but then she realized that was missing the point – for once, that was an image she actually wanted to project. And it was working. Nobody drew the connection between this shrinking violet and the confident young lady they had tabbed for the starring role in one of the town’s festivities. They barely even noticed her. Well, not exactly. They did notice her; it was a small town and the people didn’t recognize her. They just didn’t really pay attention to that. One person did, but Homura was able play herself off as part of a visiting family that had come to see the shrine. Which gave her an excuse to head up the last steps towards the shrine itself, past the lower level with the town hall where the stalls were being set up. Once there she headed over to the left, as if going the long way towards the landing that overlooked the town, and then hid behind a tree. 

Well, that was done. Now, it was time for the more important issue: where did she want to set up her ambush? 

The obvious spot was the donation box – Homura was pretty sure that was what they converted into the centerpiece of the dance, and the Rika-thing would probably practice there – but that was awfully visible. Besides, it struck her as a bridge too far – attacking at a holy place was bad enough, if at all possible she didn’t want to compound that by damaging the offerings. Basically anywhere else on the grounds also had the visibility issue, unfortunately, and also carried no guarantee that her target would actually pass by. No, sadly it had to be somewhere within the shrine proper; Homura was pretty sure the Rika-thing would enter as part of its preparations. 

Homura glanced over the front of the shrine. Ah. There. Homura had seen Rika enter this part of the shrine before, during one of the previous practices for the festival. She’d ducked in the front to prepare for her practice, Homura was sure of it. 

Homura reached into her shield and checked one of her bombs, and then a thought came to her and she had to suppress a laugh. _Just think, I’m going to set a trap to put the local “god-sent master” of the art to shame._ Well, after she got in and rigged the thing, anyways. She’d need a way of setting it off, too. 

But first. Getting inside. Hmm. Ah, luck. The men in grey seemed to be concentrating on the stalls in the street below. Although… 

Homura heard a sound not too far away, and it took her effort not to jump out of her shoes. What had that been? Not quite a gunshot. Oh, wait. Of course. A camera. 

Facing away from her, too, thankfully. 

The man holding that camera was tall and muscular. One of the two kinds of guys she was supposed to find attractive, along with the bishonen pretty boys, although neither had ever done much for Homura. Or any other guys, for that matter. Something about this man did feel… familiar, though. He reminded Homura of something. But what? Ah, that was it. He reminded her of the soldiers she’d seen when raiding that military base. Something in the physique. Perhaps he was a veteran who’d taken up photography as a hobby? Ah, but it would be impolite to ask. 

At length the man noticed Homura and turned away from the crowd beneath to look at her. Had she been staring? But that question was quickly drowned in recognition that Homura desperately tried to keep off her face – this was Tomitake, that freelance photographer from the old dam site, wasn’t he? No wonder he’d looked familiar. 

Of course, the girl she was acting like didn’t know that… 

“Ah… um… hello?” she asked, cursing herself for how easily such a cringeworthy introduction still came out. 

In response the man raised his camera as if to take a camera. 

Homura raised her hands to block her face. Ah, acting shy had been to her benefit; there was a very different reason she didn’t want to be photographed, but this man didn’t know that. 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” the man laughed, lowering the camera again. “I’m Jirou Tomitake. I’m a freelance photographer; I found out about this town a few years back and come to take pictures every year around the time of the town festival.” 

_Ah, great,_ Homura thought, _I need a fake name._ Quick, what would make a believable pseudonym? 

“I’m Hotaru Tomoyo,” Homura replied shyly. “My parents heard that the village was pretty and came to take a look, but I think they misremembered what day the festival was on?” 

“Huh. They brought you all the way here after school?” the man – Tomitake, he said? – asked. 

“We had to make a trip anyways, they brought us here as a stopover on the route,” Homura lied. “But I got separated from them – if you see them, let me know.” 

“What do they look like?” Tomitake asked. 

“Mama does not look that different from me, except she is taller and wears her hair down,” Homura scrambled. Well, when in doubt lying as little as possible was wise, and it wasn’t like anyone here had ever met her father, so… “Father is older, square-faced, square-shouldered, and his hair is starting to get grey. He’s probably the only person around wearing a suit.” 

“I can’t say I’ve seen anyone fitting that description around here today,” Tomitake said after a moment’s thought. “If I do and I see them, I’ll let them know you’re here.” 

“If I haven’t found them in the next fifteen minutes or so I’ll head back down to where we parked the car,” Homura once again lied. 

“I see,” Tomitake nodded. He paused a moment, then laughed before speaking again. “Didn’t remember the right date for the festival, huh? Heh, that’s kind of funny. Not a mistake I would have made; I would have thought it would be easy to remember that it’s the Sunday before the summer solstice, especially when you have a kid and the reason they hold it on Sunday is because that’s the day school is out.” 

“Perhaps it is for the best,” said another voice behind Homura, this one soft, feminine, and even more familiar. “If outsiders like your family were here for the festival, they might simply… disappear, no?” 

Ugh ugh ugh. Nurse Takano? The woman had met Homura, at least briefly; there was a real risk she would recognize Homura. Ah well, nothing for it. Homura just had to keep acting and pray. 

“This is Miyo Takano. She’s a nurse at the local clinic,” Tomitake said. 

“Hotaru Tomoyo,” Homura falsely introduced herself once again. 

“My, you’re a shy little thing, aren’t you?” Takano chuckled, eyeing Homura’s blatantly insecure posture. “Did I scare you?” 

“N-no… I was just curious,” Homura said after a moment. “If we were here tomorrow, we might disappear?” 

“The village festival is called Watanagashi. It’s the chief ceremony of the local deity,” Takano explained, thankfully unaware that the person she was talking to already knew this. (Of course, now that Homura thought about it Ms. Takano probably would be the sort of person to explain it again even if she knew Homura knew, wouldn’t she?) “But the village god Oyashiro-sama is a vengeful deity. Every year for the last few years now, on the day of the festival an enemy of the village dies and another disappears, and this place has long been mistrustful of outsiders…” 

A thought occurred to Homura as Ms. Takano explained, and she couldn’t help but blurt it out. “But… isn’t Tomitake here an outsider?” 

“I’ve been coming to this village for half a decade now, I figure I’m an honorary local,” Tomitake laughed. 

“Ah, I almost wish I could see such a thing,” Ms. Takano laughed. “Oyashiro-sama’s wrath. Although… it would also be interesting if it wasn’t his wrath, wouldn’t it? If it was somebody killing people and just making it look like the curse?” 

“I-I guess?” Homura said. “I think I’d better get going, I’d like to see the shrine better before I need to go back to the car.” 

She turned to leave, only to hear nurse Takano’s voice behind her once more. 

“Hmm… that hair. Maybe it is doubly for the best that you aren’t staying around. If it were down you’d look the part of the Sinner from the local procession, wouldn’t you?” 

Homura’s blood ran cold, but she didn’t venture an answer. 

Instead, she headed around the shrine, then once Tomitake and Takano had left she doubled back to look for a suitable site for her ambush. As she did so, her eyes fell on the donation box in front of the shrine. Hmm. The one other spot the Rika-thing was guaranteed to be, but blowing up the box seemed like bad form. Well, so was blowing up part of the shrine at all, admittedly. But this seemed worse, somehow? 

Hmm. She couldn’t leave enough money to make up for the rebuilding; even if she had enough on hand (and while Father did her allowance certainly didn’t), dropping in that much money might be suspicious. But she could at least offer a token. An apology to the shrine deity. 

She flipped a coin into the air so that it would land in the box. 

After a moment, it came down, bounced off the bars, and then on the rebound fell in. 

Homura risked a light whistle as she headed for the entrance, faking an interest in the railing behind the place as an excuse to look around. Good, nobody there. Not even at those stone grills that someone had set up. 

After one last check, she ducked inside. 

Aha! Someone had set up a screen inside, on the opposite side from the offering shelves. That was promising. Maybe the Rika-thing was going to use this to get changed into festival clothes. _Of course,_ Homura thought, _I’m only going to get one shot at this, so I’d better be sure._ She glanced around the rest of the room. No, mostly bare space back there. There was a space in the back, which looked to have some things in it. Homura needed to check there. Was there anywhere else? Well, the offering shelves. Homura looked over them, too. 

Or, rather, started to before her brain noticed the one thing that was very out-of-place. 

By the looks of things, someone had left a roll of paper on one of the higher shelves. Well, tried to, anyways. But they hadn’t placed it well, and half of it had unrolled onto the floor. 

Ah, well. It wasn’t Homura’s responsibility. And even if it had been, rolling it up would betray that someone had been here. 

But… she did need to make sure that the Rika-thing wasn’t going to be using it, didn’t she? And frankly, she was curious. 

She gingerly headed over to the thing and took a look. 

It was a drawing, made on a large roll of paper. Lines were drawn on it in black and pink, some sort of outline. No, it was a child’s drawing of a person, wasn’t it? It was hard to tell with how it had unfolded, but now that she was looking closely at it she could see the figure’s white dress and long pink hair… 

_No, impossible,_ Homura thought as realization set in. 

She knew that shape, didn’t she? 

She’d _met_ that shape before, 

One day, hopefully, she would meet the goddess whose shape it was again. 

And now here was a drawing of the goddess of all magical girls, here in this very godsforsaken place. 

A pity, that if Homura wanted anyone to be able to get word out about this place then she would have to ignore this lead. 

But it had to be done. 

Homura turned and moved to set up a bomb under the screen. 

_No._

Wait. What was that? 

Had it been someone else in the room? 

Apparently not, there was no one there. 

Ah well, she needed to— 

_No._

It had come again, and now Homura realized. It hadn’t been outside of her at all, had it? It had been a part of herself. 

The same part of her that was refusing to turn away, refusing to get back to the plan. She was trying to do so, but something in her just… wouldn’t let her. 

Why? 

_Someone else knows about Madoka. Find them._

But it didn’t have to be that, did it? There was that one mural that had appeared in Mitakihara… 

_You’ve been in this room once before, this wasn’t there. And it’s an offering. Someone else knows about Madoka._

Eh. Even granted that, however, could someone have intentionally drawn this picture so as to lure her— 

_Someone else knows about Madoka._

Or could they be trying to attack Madoka? Perhaps even through Homura herself? 

_Someone else knows about Madoka. You have to know._

And that was the thing, wasn’t it? In the end… given a lead like this… could Homura not at least look into it? 

Homura bent down, almost knelt down on the ground. Truly, it was a child’s drawing. Crayon? No, marker. The paper it was on— and Homura was interrupted, because in feeling it she noticed a second, smaller piece of paper that had been left on top of the large picture when it had fallen down. An index card, by the looks of it. Homura picked it up. 

> ”Wehihihihihi! 
> 
> To my very best friend: you are under the effect’s of a Witch’s kiss, or something like it. 
> 
> The syringe I’ve left her has a countermeasure. It will make you feel better. But you have to take it. 
> 
> All you have to do is to inject it into a muscle, like your thigh. 
> 
> Trust me. 
> 
> \- Madoka” 

Wait. No. Something about this was wrong. 

Homura looked at the card again, until it hit her. The handwriting was wrong. Homura had seen Madoka’s handwriting before, once upon a time, all neat and pretty. This had some of that cuteness, but it was not the same. 

Except… the words. Those were right, somehow. The laugh, the phrasing. Calling Homura her very best friend. 

Wait… how could Madoka have known that Homura would be the one to find this? It was clearly addressed to her, but this thing had been left where anyone could— wait, that one was easy, Madoka was a goddess now. Except… could the Law of Cycles even enter this place? The Incubators couldn’t, and with how this place seemed to mess with everyone’s abilities Homura wasn’t sure that what Madoka had become should have been able to either. Unless it had to do with her shield somehow? That still seemed to be working. 

Bah. This wasn’t productive. Change of perspective. What was the worst-case scenario here? Well, that this hadn’t come from Madoka, somehow. But then somebody else still knew about Madoka. Unless it had to do with the doppelgangers, somehow? 

Homura’s blood ran cold and her armpits itched. That was possible. Maybe whatever caused them could see enough of Homura to piece together Madoka’s existence. Maybe they could imitate Madoka herself! And that would explain why the handwriting was different, too; they had made a mistake. She had to— 

No. Not yet. If she was wrong and this _was_ from Madoka… no. 

Was there anything else she could use to distinguish between these possibilities? 

Hmm. There wasn’t anything else on the large drawing. There was, however, writing on the other side of the card that Homura had missed? She took a closer look. 

> Of course this isn’t my handwriting; I had to ask someone else to make this for me, you know! 

Well, that answered one question. Or claimed to, anyways. 

But it didn’t resolve the deeper question at all, did it? 

Was this actually Madoka, somehow? Or was it something far more sinister imitating her? 

Homura waffled. 

She pulled one of her pipe bombs out of her shield, hesitated, and then put it back. 

She pulled out a gun, field stripped it, and put it back. 

She pulled out the pipe bomb again – or was it a different one? – then hesitated before putting it back. 

To go through with the original plan, or to abort the mission in favor of this new path offered? 

And still Homura wavered. 

Until, finally… Homura took out one of her pipe bombs again and started to move to put it in place on the ground. 

And then, suddenly, she stopped. 

No. 

No. Homura would trust her very best friend, one last time. 

Even if it killed her. 

Homura put the pipe bomb up for the last time, and then reached down and picked up the syringe, suppressing a wince at the sight. Slowly, she inserted it into a muscle. (For once, her past was coming in handy – she’d been taught to do this back at the hospital, just in case.) She injected its contents, and could feel something cool and black start to move through her. 

A sense of peace overtook her. 

The world went dark. 

And then, in the inky darkness, she opened her eyes once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Why yes, Homura's fake name here is a reference. A double reference, actually. Which two characters are left as an exercise to the reader. (Hint: they're the two most obvious names.)


	13. Despero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Infinity behind me, eternity before;  
> which way do I turn?
> 
> The comforting dark below me, an unknown vault above;  
> wherefore shall I go?
> 
> Is there truly a way I had not seen?  
> Tell me, stranger: is there?
> 
> \- Hellflower

Homura glanced up. 

The shrine was gone. 

Instead it was… a pit. Cylindrical, with tall walls all around her. There was no light, and yet she could see it? Or perhaps there was light and it was simply that everything around her was black. 

Strange. 

She looked down. 

That was weird. Her hands… they weren’t really hands at all? Just… bones. Bones encased in some kind of pillory. 

_Yes,_ she thought, _this is as it should be._ A punishment. A final reckoning for all her sins. The long procession to her own execution. She could feel it, below her. The longing darkness of oblivion, which was all she deserved. Or perhaps more than she deserved. It was pulling her in. 

And yet. 

There was something… 

Homura adjusted her hands, slightly separating the pillory. 

Wait. 

What? 

Homura experimentally lifted her arms. 

The bottom of the pillory fell off – it had been secured by nothing at all. 

Homura bent down and glanced at the unlocked pillory. Strange. There was a lock on it. Someone had put the key into it? 

She glanced down at herself. 

She was wearing a black dress, plain and drab, with only a little white and a few ribbons of color. 

And, around her neck, a placard. 

She pulled it off and looked at it, curious in spite of herself. What else was there to do? 

There was writing on it, in letters she should not have been able to read and yet could. 

> **Homulilly**
> 
> The Nutcracker Witch, with a self-sufficient nature. 

Yes. 

That was who she was. 

And yet… 

Was she? 

She looked back down at the placard. Interesting. There was something else written on the other side, wasn’t there? She turned it over for a closer look. 

> **Homulilly**
> 
> The Witch of the Mortal World. Her nature is karma. 

Homura looked back up. 

Something brushed her face. 

She grabbed it. 

It was the ribbon. One of the ones Madoka had given her. A last memory. 

_You are not she yet._

Those words. Who had said them? 

It had almost sounded like Madoka. It had almost sounded like someone else familiar. It had almost sounded like someone else entirely. 

And, in the unknowable distance of the inky blackness, there was something. 

Homura went over to look at it. What else was there to do? 

It was… a step. 

A stairstep? 

Homura started to step forward to try it. 

And then she stopped, and put her foot back where it had been. 

No. 

No, this was where she was meant to be. She was not meant to go here, to tarry here. She needed to turn back. Back where she was supposed to be. 

Except… 

There was something on the step. 

She bent down and picked it up. It was long and thin. Another ribbon? No, not quite. A string. But it reminded her of them. And the person who had given them to her. 

And it led somewhere. Up the step. 

She started to try the step once more. 

And put her foot back down. 

She balanced there a moment, between the two competing urges. 

And, finally, Homura decided. 

She started to try the step once more, and this time she willed it through. 

What was up here in front of her now? 

Another step. 

After a moment, a faster moment this time, she took it. 

Once more, she felt the urge to turn back, to sink back into the icy blackness. 

And yet… there was the string. Leading her, guiding her to something else. 

She pulled herself along it. No, not actually, had she? But it felt like it. 

Another step. 

Another step. 

Another step. 

How many of them were there? 

_Step._

She could see them now, reaching out into the vast darkness. 

_Step._

How was she meant to climb all of them? 

_Step._

And yet. 

_Step._

Why was she climbing these stairs, anyways? 

_Step._

What was she going towards? 

_Step._

And yet. 

_Step._

Madoka was gone. 

_Step._

She had nothing left to live for. 

_Step._

There was nothing left in the tank. 

_Step._

And yet. 

_Step._

She was not— 

_Step._

—done— 

_Step._

—yet. 

_Step._

Not now. 

_Step._

Not in this place. 

_Step._

She might not know what she was heading for. 

_Step._

But she could at least keep walking. 

_Step._

Homura glanced back down at her hands, the hands on the ribbon. 

_Step._

They were ordinary hands again. 

_Step._

… Had they ever not been ordinary hands? 

_Step._

No matter. 

_Step._

The abyss was behind her. 

_Step._

She could no longer feel its pull. 

_Step._

And then, suddenly, there were no more steps. 

Just another open space. 

This one open to infinity, just a dark and reflective floor receding outwards. At the horizon the stars came out, even the Milky Way. It was like looking up at the night sky would have been if the Earth was just a featureless flat plane. 

Well, not quite featureless. 

There were a small handful of obstructions to the distant glory of the stars. Twelve of them, to be precise. They looked like figures. Strange, distorted figures. 

She looked around at them, and then looked closer at one. 

And recoiled, shocked by recognition. 

She knew that shape, didn’t she? She’d fought against it. Kyoko had been killed by it, more than once. No, she knew that shape, the mermaid with the ruff and the armored head. 

It had a placard around its neck, much like the one Homura had been wearing. Was still wearing, she realized, though the rest of her clothes looked normal again. 

She reached out and gingerly took a hold of it, pulling it closer to take a better look even though she thought she knew what it would say. 

And, indeed, it did. 

> **Oktavia von Seckendorff**
> 
> The Mermaid Witch, with a romantic nature. 

She glanced around at the other figures. 

Hmm. She knew one of the other ones, too, didn’t she? All yellow ribbons and a price tag and a fan for a head. She’d seen that shape a few times, fought against it more than once. She knew what it would say, too. Well, the name, at least. 

She still looked at it, just to be sure. 

> **Candeloro**
> 
> The Dress-Up Witch, with an inviting nature. 

She glanced back at the other figures. 

One of the others… hmm. It almost reminded Homura of Kyoko, somehow. It had to be the red, didn’t it? The thing… and really, she knew what kind of thing it was, this Witch… it looked like a lit matchstick wearing a kimono riding a woven dark grey horse. 

She glanced at its placard, too. 

> **Ophelia**
> 
> The Warrior-Actress Witch. Her nature is self-abandonment. 

Homura looked back up. Hmm. None of the others looked nearly so familiar. But… she felt like it was important that she remember them? She wasn’t sure why? But did she have anything better to be doing? No. And one of them looked a little familiar, now that she looked at it, with its white dress and beret. Homura looked closer at it, and started to recoil before controlling herself. It was like the body of the thing was made with… maggots. A great mass of writhing maggots in the shape of a girl, moving as a single entity and wearing a white dress. Suppressing her disgust, she gingerly reached out and looked at the placard. Izabel… like that Artist Witch, the one that had started her path to all this? No, obviously not. The spelling was different. And there was more to the name… 

> **Santa Isabel**
> 
> The Collector Witch, with a protective nature. 

_Bizarre,_ Homura thought as she hastily allowed the placard to fall. But it was bizarre because it was almost too familiar, and now that she thought about it not just because of the resemblance to the name of the Witch that had started Homura down this path. Santa… that meant “saint”, didn’t it, in some European language? Homura dimly remembered reading that back when she’d been at – ugh – that place, back then. She’d been the only person in the class to take what the nuns were saying about religion seriously enough to look into it herself, at least for a year or two, she might have run across it then. Or maybe it had been something in one of those history books she’d read for fun? Ah, but she could no longer remember. And there were other figures here, weren't there? 

Homura allowed her disgust to overcome her curiosity at last and instead headed for the next unfamiliar figure. This one was less… organic, at least. Still strange, of course, but that was a given. The figure looked like what Homura imagined one of those old Western statues she’d learned about once would look like if you viewed it through one of those funhouse mirrors – all white, like marble or porcelain, but also distorted in a way Homura couldn’t quite place. The base was submerged in water and surrounded by broken plinths; on the other end, Homura was pretty sure that the thing’s “head” was actually some kind of squash. 

Why the thing seemed to be wearing a frilly pink dress and nightcap, Homura could only guess. 

Presumably there had to be one of those placards here as well, but it took Homura a minute to find it. Finally she spotted it, dangling off one of the broken plinths: 

> **Lambdadelta**
> 
> The Witch of Certainty. Her nature is to push away. 

Once more, Homura turned and glanced at the next figure. 

Huh. This one was also a little weirdly familiar, but not in the same way. She hadn’t seen it before, just… something like it. Something not real. Something out of a movie? Probably; Homura had the sneaking suspicion that it had been some popular foreign film, though she couldn’t remember whether they’d shown it to her at that school or at the hospital. At any rate, the effect was clear; the Witch looked like some CGI animator’s bad take on a creature that was half-human, half-wolf, albeit with lime green streaks added to the drab grey fur. The proportions were all wrong, too, especially the extra-large arms (whose claws seemed to crackle with electricity?). 

There was a placard, too, of course, and Homura took the time to read it: 

> **Xolotl**
> 
> The Lycanthrope Witch, with a jealous nature. 

Homura glanced around the room. Yes. Only three more of the figures left. And what was this one, then? A strange little figure. At first glance it looked like a little toy drummer boy, wearing some Western military uniform. But that wasn’t quite it, was it? It wasn’t made quite right, the shape just wasn’t quite right and the drum wasn’t actually attached to the hands and most worrisome of all there was no shadow? There was supposed to be a shadow, right? Yes, the lighting was right for it, and now that Homura looked at the other figures again they all had shadows. 

And there was an extra shadow, too. 

Ah. This was another Charlotte, wasn’t it? 

_No,_ Homura realized as she looked more closely at the space above the shadow, _not quite._ This wasn’t a decoy, it was a distortion. A hallucination. The shape just appeared to be slightly offset from where it actually was. 

Homura wasn’t sure why, but she was suddenly and intuitively certain that the figure’s view of the world would be distorted as well. 

Well, more than a Witch’s view of the world was always distorted, anyways. 

As if confirming Homura’s conclusion, there was no placard on the drummer boy shape itself… but there was a flat rectangular patch in space above the shadow that stood out relative to everything else. 

Homura wasn’t sure how she hadn’t spotted it immediately, if she was going to be honest with herself. 

She reached at the patch, and sure enough her fingers closed on the distinctive texture of a placard. She tried to move it slightly, and suddenly she could read it: 

> **Polly Oliver**
> 
> The Witch of the Chrysalis. Her nature is an alibi. 

She let the card go, and as if to further confirm her theories it immediately sunk back into being an odder patch in the space above the disembodied shadow. And despite not quite falling back to the same place, too. Interesting. 

She continued to look at the space for a minute before turning away; her curiosity was not satisfied, no, but she wasn’t going to get anything more out of this right now. Instead, she moved to the second-to-last figure. Well, for a given value of figure. This was one of the less humanoid Witches, wasn’t it? It wasn’t even necessarily a shape, per se, just an irregularly-shaped machine comprised of clockwork gears. The gears turned, a motion seemingly erratic but clearly following some inner logic of the machine’s function; as they did, a series of journals turned towards and away from the viewer, their pages turned irregularly by appendages in the shape of pointing hands. The entire assemblage was suspended in a boxlike frame, which was inexplicably partly covered by a satiny veil. 

Homura glanced over the shape for a moment, looking for what she knew would be there, but it took her a moment to find it. Which was embarrassing, honestly; it was facing her, and if you looked at the frame as a painting frame it was exactly where you would have expected to find the caption explaining the piece. This one was firmly affixed, so instead Homura leaned in to read it: 

> **Bruennhilde**
> 
> The Witch of the Festival. Her nature is apotheosis. 

There was one more figure, and Homura turned to look at it. 

Or started to, anyways. 

Her eyes caught as she did so. There was something there, outside this circular space of a room, somehow incredibly distant and yet only an arm’s length away at the same time. Two things, to be precise. Two impossibly large shapes. 

One of them was horrifyingly familiar. 

Homura knew that shape, knew that surface of a ball of string extending the simulacrum of a head and arms. It haunted her nightmares, second only to the action she had once taken to prevent that figure from manifesting. Or perhaps third? 

And yet… for the second time today (was it really still today?), there was triumph in the sight. Proof. Proof that her memories were not a lie. Proof that Madoka had once existed. 

There was a card there, too, strangely no larger or smaller than the others. Homura knew what it would say, and yet she looked over it still: 

> **Kriemhild Gretchen**
> 
> The Witch of Salvation, with a merciful nature. 

But there was another figure there as well, wasn’t there? A crystalline one Homura did not recognize. She took a closer look. Parts of the shape struck her as surprisingly similar to Kriemhild, or that other Witch that was the last of the three figures that so often haunted her dreams. Its shape reminded Homura of a woman wearing one of those fancy European dresses, or perhaps the kind of miko outfit that came with detached sleeves – a conical lower section with two protrusions underneath, the apex of that cone leading to another section shaped almost like one of those Western kites, with a bulbous “head” attached at the top and an armlike appendage at each other point with an outer part that flared out from a central core almost like a lampshade away from a lamp. The most distinctive part about the shape, however, was the composition: it was like it was made out of thousands if not millions of angular crystals (or perhaps crystal fragments?) cohering into a single entity, each one flickering with brief images impossible to distinguish. And there was the shape around the head, too – a single massive fragment-crystal in the shape of a crescent moon, looping around the… well, for lack of better words, the back of the being’s head. It wasn’t actually connected to the head, as far Homura could see, and yet it behaved like it was; it hovered in midair if supported and moved with the shape’s head movements. 

Presumably there was a card associated with it, Homura realized, and lo and behold there it was: 

> **Featherine Augustus Aurora**
> 
> The Theatergoing Witch. Her nature is the closed circle. 

Which left one last shape, the one Homura had been starting to look at in the first place, and in some ways it was the strangest of all. It looked nearly human, after all. In most respects it was indistinguishable from a girl wearing a somewhat ornate dress. It reminded her of the dress she was wearing— had been wearing, Homura remembered as she looked down again to see the familiar shape of her magical girl outfit. The was drab, mostly black and dark blue with white accents. The “girl” wearing it… well, in some ways it almost reminded Homura of what she might have looked like a few years back if she’d been smart enough to jettison the twin braids back then, albeit with hair whose hair almost looked dark blue instead of black. Really, how much difference was there between this shape and a normal girl? And then Homura happened to glance at the eyes, and recoiled for reasons quite different from her dislike of eye contact. They were dull, with just a blank dark blue disk where the pupils and iris should have been. And now that Homura looked at the figure again it almost looked like there wasn’t actually a normal body under the dress, just a wine bottle? 

There was a card for the last figure too, of course. Homura took it gingerly in her fingers and looked at it: 

> **Frederica Bernkastel**
> 
> The Witch of Miracles. Her nature is to fiddle while Rome burns. 

And then, suddenly, the last figure shifted. 

It still looked like a girl… no, not _looked_ like a girl now, did it? She was just a girl, now. A girl shorter than Homura, wearing what looked like a modified miko outfit and carrying a black scythe taller than she was. 

And, now that Homura looked at the girl, she knew exactly who the girl was, didn’t she? 

An hour ago… a day ago… an eternity ago… at any rate, before Homura had entered the shrine the sight of that figure would have filled her with dread and loathing. Instead, now she felt only calm. 

Rika gently placed her scythe on the ground and looked up at Homura. 

“I’m sorry,” the younger girl said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Witch name reference time!
> 
> Santa Isabel – Isabel I of Castile, later first queen of Spain; more commonly referred to in English as Queen Isabella. (The Santa is mostly there to distinguish the name from canon Izabel, because the reference fits way too well not to use, but I may just be ahead of my time because it turns out the actual historical Isabel I is presently undergoing the Catholic beatification process. I’m as surprised as you are.)  
> Xolotl – Aztec deity, brother of Quetzalcoatl. (In case you’re wondering, the concept for her shape is a rather direct dig at Lupin’s CGI werewolf form from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.)  
> Polly Oliver – Traditional English song.  
> Lambdadelta – From the eleventh and fourth letters of the Greek alphabet. Also, and more importantly, from [REDACTED] - not technically a spoiler, but adjacent to things that are; if you know it, you know it. (I am not entirely confident in this choice; the other name I was considering was Belajavuel (the Stoic Witch), from the Russian for “white veil”.)  
> Frederica Bernkastel – taken directly from Higurashi.  
> Featherine Augustus Aurora – [REDACTED].

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes:  
> \- I've opted, as a rule, to avoid honorifics; they feel wrong in written English. (There's a couple of exceptions, mostly ones that work as nicknames anyways like the cutesy Rika-chama form.) It's not like I'm using Japanese name order here, either. Instead, I've gone for a cultural translation of sorts using the closest English equivalent I'm reasonably familiar with: (American) Southern polite address.  
> \- Yes, this work is set after Episode 12 of PMMM. Yes, Homura has her shield. This is intentional. (More generally, Wraith Arc did not happen in this timeline, though Sayaka still died fighting Wraiths, and Rebellion has not either.)  
> \- For the record: Yep, Kyoko is bi here (I think that might be correct even for canon with Kyoko just being in denial, though she definitely likes girls either way).(  
> \- Also for the record: Rika and Satoko's ages are divergent from Higurashi canon here to fit with author's headcanon: they're both 11/fifth grade here rather than fourth. (IMO Himatsubushi-hen/Time Wasting Chapter works better if Rika is as old as she can be without being old enough for school, plus bumping Rika up a year fits better with some of her Akasaka interactions in Matsuribayashi-hen.)


End file.
